Language development and language disorders

Most young children learn the words and rules for simple sentences in their first few years. Some children, however, learn language more slowly and with more difficulty so that by their third birthday, parents and caregivers become concerned. Helping these children to catch up and learn language requires a plan for assessment and then a plan for intervention. Before this book was published, in 1978, deciding which language forms to teach and in what order had typically relied on intuition and what seemed easiest to learn. In contrast, the book first pointed out that not only are the forms of language important, but also important are their content and use − what language forms mean and how they are used in social contexts. And second, information from research with children who acquire language normally ought to inform plans for teaching children who learn language with difficulty. The important contributions in the book were a model of language with three intersecting components: content, form, and use, together with guidelines for using information from normal language acquisition to create plans for assessment and intervention for children with language disorders.