Readings (3)

Princ. Reading Comp.	Lesson 2: Readings (3)	-

Language Problems of Students with Learning Disabilities

Barbara J. Ehren, Ed.D.
University of Kansas-Center for Research on Learning

Looking at Language Subsystems
There are many ways to think about language problems depending on what paradigm of language you are using. In this lesson we talk about the subsystems of language - pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology and phonology. That is usually a good place to begin discussing the nature of language in listening, speaking, reading and writing. We can also use this configuration to describe language problems. We can say that students with learning disabilities have difficulties with understanding and using the meaning (semantics), form (phonology, morphology, syntax) or context (pragmatics) of language. Within this schema, limited vocabulary would be a problem in semantics; incorrect verb tenses would be a problem with morphology; inability to understand or structure different question patterns would constitute a deficit in syntax; and misinterpretation of speaker's or writer's perspective would be a problem with pragmatics.

Some of these problems students encounter may entail difficulties with basic linguistic skills, which means they have trouble using the meaning, form, or context of the language code. For example, a student may not be able to understand or formulate sentences containing "if/then" constructions, such as, " If you don't turn in your project on time, then the teacher will lower your grade." The problem could also be with metalinguistic components. For example, a student who does not have word consciousness may not recognize that when someone describes rap singers as "a dime a dozen" that the use of those words together is idiomatic, that it would not literally cost 10 cents to hire twelve musicians. It is not always possible to tell the difference on the surface. For example, if a student has difficulty putting someone else's language into his own words, the difficulty could either be linguistic or metalinguistic. If he doesn't know synonyms for the words or doesn't have a variety of sentence structures at his command to use in rewording, then the problem will be a linguistic one. If on the other hand, the whole act of paraphrasing, that is, a conscious manipulation of the language to make it different, is the problem, then the difficulty is metalinguistic.

Looking at Related Cognitive and Metacognitive Problems
Language learning and use can be affected by related cognitive and metacognitive problems. A student who has attention problems and cannot focus attention on a task or sustain attention over time will suffer the consequences when he needs to process or produce language. With regard to reading comprehension, if his attention is not on the task at hand or if it wanders over time, he may miss key words that affect meaning.

Memory is another related factor that affects language functioning. Problems with storing information in long term memory can mean that students won't remember vocabulary words or other background information needed to understand what they read. Difficulties with working memory can interfere with processing text if the reader doesn't remember what she has read from one sentence to another. This would be a particular problem when reading whole chapters of books. The reader may lose the main idea of the text. Another area of memory in which students with learning disabilities have trouble is retrieval, meaning that they have the information stored in memory but can't access it when needed. (See additional information below on word retrieval problems.) Also, another lesson specifically on vocabulary development will have more detailed information on word retrieval.

The metacognitive problems that can affect language learning and use are lack of monitoring and repair. Students may make errors in understanding or formulating language but may not know they have a problem. For reading, lack of comprehension monitoring means that students don't know that they are not understanding correctly. The other side of this coin is repair of breakdowns in communication. In reading, a problem with repair may mean that even if a student knows there is a problem with comprehension, he doesn't necessarily fix it. In reading comprehension, this may mean that even if a reader knows he hasn't grasped the meaning of a passage, he doesn't employ any strategies to help improve understanding. The lesson on strategic instruction will explore this problem in greater depth.

Multiple Components
When discussing specific problems students encounter with language, it is often difficult to separate out difficulties into single elements, especially when considering higher levels of language. There are often multiple components involved in a single performance description. For example, a student who has trouble understanding complex sentences with clauses when he reads could be having this problem for several different reasons. It may be related to syntax, that is, the student hasn't internalized the rules for clausing and doesn't use clauses in his oral language either. It may also be that the student doesn't understand the meaning underlying the relationships the clauses are meant to express. In that case, the problem would be a semantic one. It is also possible that the problem is a combination of syntax and semantic deficits. Another example was the one you read earlier about paraphrasing. Difficulties in this area can be linguistic in nature, perhaps with semantics or syntax, or metalinguistic, with the whole concept of rephrasing.

Looking at Structural Levels
Categorizing problems by language subsystems is not the only way to explain language deficits. Another way is to describe language difficulties is at different structural levels. We could describe difficulties students have with individual words, then various word sequences, like phrases and sentences. We could also describe problems at the discourse or text level. Those occur with connected language, such as sequences of sentences and longer units of thought as in whole stories. For example, let's take for the area of semantics. Some students don't have problems with the meaning of individual words, but rather with the association of ideas that occurs at the discourse or text level. A student may have the vocabulary necessary to understand a novel she is reading but may miss the subtle nuance of meaning expressed throughout the chapters and may not understand the theme or gist of the story.

To describe in greater detail problems that students with learning disabilities have with language, we will categorize problems occurring at the word, phrase, sentence, and discourse/text level.

Word Meaning and Relationships

PROBLEM EXAMPLE

Vocabulary deficits. A student may not know the meaning of words that peers would typically have as part of their lexicon. The vocabulary gap widens as students get older and contributes to an insufficient knowledge base which further affects reading comprehension adversely. This problem provides a common denominator for students with learning disabilities and interferes in most areas of learning. A seventh grader has difficulty constructing meaning from her science textbook because every chapter has a section called, "Let's Investigate"and she doesn't know the meaning of the word "investigate."

Difficulty with multiple-meaning words. Students may have learned only one meaning for a word, or they may have difficulty switching gears to assign a different meaning. This problem may also be related to the inability to use context clues to assist with understanding vocabulary. It may also be related to lack of word consciousness metalinguistically. A second grader may have learned the word "catch " in the context of baseball. If he reads a story about the "Catch of the Day" and it is about fishing, he may get confused in trying to understand the story.

Inability to explain similarities or differences in concepts. A student may understand the basic meaning of a concept but may not be able to use language to assign attributes that are the same and different. A third grader who reads "The Fox and the Hen" may get the gist of the story but may not be able to use language to compare and contrast the two animals.

Literal interpretation of figurative language. Students may understand literal meanings of words but may not get past a concrete level of interpretation. Difficulties with similes, metaphors and idioms may be involved. Humor may be lost on students who can't deal with figurative language. Metalinguistic problems with word consciousness may be an issue here. A high school student discussing a Science Fair project with the teacher fails to understand that her proposed project is not a suitable one when the teacher says, "You're barking up the wrong tree." The same student will be at a loss to process the metaphors and idioms in the textbooks and the literature she has to read.

Word Retrieval

PROBLEM EXAMPLE

Word retrieval or word finding difficulties. Some students have trouble calling forth the exact word when needed even though they know the word. This problem is not caused by a lack of vocabulary. The student knows the word but has difficulty accessing it at a given time (i.e., It's on the "tip of the tongue" but the student can't produce it on command.) It is often exhibited by use of overly general words, like "thing" or "stuff," circumlocution (i.e. talking around a concept), or use of neologisms (i.e., made-up words.). Retrieval difficulties can pose a problem for automaticity in reading. Comprehension will surely suffer, if this is the case, because students need to be able to identify words quickly in order to maintain the fluency needed for understanding text. A student who is relating an incident that occurred at home over the weekend and cannot use his sister's name in the story, says, "uh, you know, my sister, she has a boyfriend..." He may also use a gesture, like finger-snapping. In another language mode, the same student can read a word in one paragraph, but cannot read the same word in a subsequent paragraph.

Word Structure

PROBLEM EXAMPLE

Difficulty with morphological variations of words. Failure to attend to morphological forms in listening and reading, or to use them in speaking and writing, can cause confusion in meaning. These forms may include tense markers on verbs, "er" or "or" on verbs to make them nouns, or plural and possessive markers on nouns. A third grader misreads "The football star waited for the train (for trainer) after the game" and thinks that the athlete was taking a trip after the game.

Misdiscrimination of speech sounds. Difficulty with perceiving phonemes may lead to misunderstanding of words and meaning in listening tasks. Ultimately these kinds of difficulties will interfere with learning to decode words. A student who is asked by the teacher to put his backpack on the shelf places it on the ocean life display instead, because he interprets "shelf" as "shell."

Lack of awareness of word structure. Some students can't segment words into syllables or sounds because they are unaware that words are comprised of smaller parts. This is a metalinguistic problem. A first grade student learning to decode words struggles as the teacher instructs him to "sound out the word." This prompt is meaningless to him since he doesn't know that words are made of individual sounds.

Phrase Structure

PROBLEM EXAMPLE

Tendency to "lose" small or structural words in phrases. Sometimes students fail to process the less substantive content words, like prepositions, articles, and conjunctions. This omission may lead to misinterpretation of discourse or text. A fifth grade student who fails to note the word "not" in the sentence, "The bird was not among the flock when they flew south." may miss the whole point of the story that she is reading or that is being read to her.

Lack of knowledge of phrase structure rules. Some students may be able to speak using appropriate phrases but may not have the metalinguistic awareness of phrase structure. This kind of a problem may be at the root of failure to make linguistic predictions required to read fluently, or to use linguistic context for interpreting information. A middle school student reads the phrase "the will" and doesn't realize that "will" in this case is not a future tense marker because it is preceded by "the." He's not really conscious of the structure of phrases. He may lose time trying to cloze with a word to complete the future tense. (Please note that most students will not be able to articulate the rule, but they will know implicitly that "the" comes before a noun and will use that knowledge to assist with fluent reading.)

Sentence Structure

PROBLEM EXAMPLE
Difficulty using constructions to combine thoughts. Often students with language learning disabilities use overly simple sentence constructions. They may not know a variety of sentence patterns, nor a variety of ways to manipulate sentence meaning with the use of conjunctions (e.g., if...then, because, although) or relative pronouns (e.g., who, that, which). They may not be able to interpret their meaning when they encounter them in reading because they are not in their language base. A middle school student in language arts writes, "Orcas are whales. They live in the sea. They hunt for food." When he encounters the sentence, "Whales, called orcas, another group of hunters in the sea, compete for the available food in the shrinking space that is their habitat," he has difficulty understanding a sentence of that structural complexity.

Difficulty with comprehension and formulation of embedded clauses. Some students have particular problems dealing with embedded clauses that can hinder interpretation and manipulation of complex thoughts. The more advanced the reading material, the more dependent comprehension will be on understanding the syntax. Further, reading these structures in print is how most students acquire them in their language base. An eleventh grade student who reads the following sentence in her history textbook, "It was not until 1440, when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Germany, that modern printing began in Europe," cannot answer the question, "When did Gutenberg invent movable type?" because she didn't process the embedded clause, "when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Germany." She may be better able to answer, "When did modern printing begin?"

Discourse/Text

PROBLEM EXAMPLE

Problems in processing ambiguities. Some students have difficulty integrating meaning across sentences to process longer texts. Because there are certain aspects of text that rely on previous linguistic referents, students can get lost if they fail to consider all text in interpreting information. If a student is reading a long chapter in a novel involving two characters, both of whom are female, he may become confused as to the referents for pronouns "she" and "her" if the name is not in the sentence.

Paraphrasing difficulties. Many students with language disabilities are inflexible in dealing with language meaning and structure. They have difficulty expressing an idea in more than one way. Lack of flexibility in manipulating text often results in single interpretations and literal interpretations. Linguistic problems using meaning or structure may be involved. Metalinguistic difficulties with conscious manipulation of language may also be at issue. For example, a fourth grade student reading a social studies textbook may not be able to explain the content in his own words. Students with these problems often get accused of plagiarism when they have to do reports because they often use resource material verbatim.

Difficulty synthesizing information. The student who cannot glean a central message from text will not respond appropriately when asked to identify the main idea in a paragraph or extended text. He may tend to zero in on details as opposed to global meaning. He will also not be able to give a summary of content heard or read. If a high school student is taking notes from her textbook, she may write down little pieces of information without writing the key concepts presented in the book.

Poor elaborative language. Students may speak and write in short statements. This problem may be related to many language factors. Some of them may be vocabulary deficits, word retrieval problems, and difficulties with complex syntax. Poor topic elaboration will adversely affect not only fluency of expression but also higher order reading comprehension. Tasks such as inferencing, predicting, interpreting, and evaluating require manipulation of language in one's head or through oral discussion. Students who don't have elaborative language will not have the tools to construct meaning in reading at this level. A sixth grade student may be asked to write an essay on the causes of the Civil War and may write just a short paragraph or may be asked to make an oral presentation and perform only briefly. A student who lacks extended discourse abilities may not be able to understand elaborated text when reading.

Poor organization and topic maintenance. Some students can't stick to a topic in speaking and writing or can't follow a topic in listening and reading. On the production side, a student may dance around the topic without getting to the point or may insert irrelevant information. On the processing side, a student may get confused with different organizational patterns of discourse or text and lose the meaning. This problem may in part be related to familiarity with different discourse and text structures. Another factor may be lack of attention to cohesion devices such as transition words. The middle school student who is trying to decipher his world history textbook has trouble making use of chapter headings and subheadings to help him understand the key content being taught. The same student when doing a social studies report turns in difficult-to-follow, randomly constructed information.

Lack of pragmatic language skills. Some students have difficulty in understanding and using language for a variety of purposes. Sometimes they don't recognize different language styles when they listen or read. They may miss subtle nuances and tone. They fail to recognize context. A high school student reading The Scarlet Letter may have difficulty determining the author's intent or perspective.

This list of language problems experienced by students with learning disabilities is by no means an exhaustive list. However, it should give you a basic understanding of the problems encountered by students with learning disabilities in the area of language.

PROBLEM	EXAMPLE
Vocabulary deficits. A student may not know the meaning of words that peers would typically have as part of their lexicon. The vocabulary gap widens as students get older and contributes to an insufficient knowledge base which further affects reading comprehension adversely. This problem provides a common denominator for students with learning disabilities and interferes in most areas of learning.	A seventh grader has difficulty constructing meaning from her science textbook because every chapter has a section called, "Let's Investigate"and she doesn't know the meaning of the word "investigate."
Difficulty with multiple-meaning words. Students may have learned only one meaning for a word, or they may have difficulty switching gears to assign a different meaning. This problem may also be related to the inability to use context clues to assist with understanding vocabulary. It may also be related to lack of word consciousness metalinguistically.	A second grader may have learned the word "catch " in the context of baseball. If he reads a story about the "Catch of the Day" and it is about fishing, he may get confused in trying to understand the story.
Inability to explain similarities or differences in concepts. A student may understand the basic meaning of a concept but may not be able to use language to assign attributes that are the same and different.	A third grader who reads "The Fox and the Hen" may get the gist of the story but may not be able to use language to compare and contrast the two animals.
Literal interpretation of figurative language. Students may understand literal meanings of words but may not get past a concrete level of interpretation. Difficulties with similes, metaphors and idioms may be involved. Humor may be lost on students who can't deal with figurative language. Metalinguistic problems with word consciousness may be an issue here.	A high school student discussing a Science Fair project with the teacher fails to understand that her proposed project is not a suitable one when the teacher says, "You're barking up the wrong tree." The same student will be at a loss to process the metaphors and idioms in the textbooks and the literature she has to read.

PROBLEM	EXAMPLE
Difficulty with morphological variations of words. Failure to attend to morphological forms in listening and reading, or to use them in speaking and writing, can cause confusion in meaning. These forms may include tense markers on verbs, "er" or "or" on verbs to make them nouns, or plural and possessive markers on nouns.	A third grader misreads "The football star waited for the train (for trainer) after the game" and thinks that the athlete was taking a trip after the game.
Misdiscrimination of speech sounds. Difficulty with perceiving phonemes may lead to misunderstanding of words and meaning in listening tasks. Ultimately these kinds of difficulties will interfere with learning to decode words.	A student who is asked by the teacher to put his backpack on the shelf places it on the ocean life display instead, because he interprets "shelf" as "shell."
Lack of awareness of word structure. Some students can't segment words into syllables or sounds because they are unaware that words are comprised of smaller parts. This is a metalinguistic problem.	A first grade student learning to decode words struggles as the teacher instructs him to "sound out the word." This prompt is meaningless to him since he doesn't know that words are made of individual sounds.

PROBLEM	EXAMPLE
Tendency to "lose" small or structural words in phrases. Sometimes students fail to process the less substantive content words, like prepositions, articles, and conjunctions. This omission may lead to misinterpretation of discourse or text.	A fifth grade student who fails to note the word "not" in the sentence, "The bird was not among the flock when they flew south." may miss the whole point of the story that she is reading or that is being read to her.
Lack of knowledge of phrase structure rules. Some students may be able to speak using appropriate phrases but may not have the metalinguistic awareness of phrase structure. This kind of a problem may be at the root of failure to make linguistic predictions required to read fluently, or to use linguistic context for interpreting information.	A middle school student reads the phrase "the will" and doesn't realize that "will" in this case is not a future tense marker because it is preceded by "the." He's not really conscious of the structure of phrases. He may lose time trying to cloze with a word to complete the future tense. (Please note that most students will not be able to articulate the rule, but they will know implicitly that "the" comes before a noun and will use that knowledge to assist with fluent reading.)

PROBLEM	EXAMPLE
Difficulty using constructions to combine thoughts. Often students with language learning disabilities use overly simple sentence constructions. They may not know a variety of sentence patterns, nor a variety of ways to manipulate sentence meaning with the use of conjunctions (e.g., if...then, because, although) or relative pronouns (e.g., who, that, which). They may not be able to interpret their meaning when they encounter them in reading because they are not in their language base.	A middle school student in language arts writes, "Orcas are whales. They live in the sea. They hunt for food." When he encounters the sentence, "Whales, called orcas, another group of hunters in the sea, compete for the available food in the shrinking space that is their habitat," he has difficulty understanding a sentence of that structural complexity.
Difficulty with comprehension and formulation of embedded clauses. Some students have particular problems dealing with embedded clauses that can hinder interpretation and manipulation of complex thoughts. The more advanced the reading material, the more dependent comprehension will be on understanding the syntax. Further, reading these structures in print is how most students acquire them in their language base.	An eleventh grade student who reads the following sentence in her history textbook, "It was not until 1440, when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Germany, that modern printing began in Europe," cannot answer the question, "When did Gutenberg invent movable type?" because she didn't process the embedded clause, "when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Germany." She may be better able to answer, "When did modern printing begin?"

PROBLEM	EXAMPLE
Problems in processing ambiguities. Some students have difficulty integrating meaning across sentences to process longer texts. Because there are certain aspects of text that rely on previous linguistic referents, students can get lost if they fail to consider all text in interpreting information.	If a student is reading a long chapter in a novel involving two characters, both of whom are female, he may become confused as to the referents for pronouns "she" and "her" if the name is not in the sentence.
Paraphrasing difficulties. Many students with language disabilities are inflexible in dealing with language meaning and structure. They have difficulty expressing an idea in more than one way. Lack of flexibility in manipulating text often results in single interpretations and literal interpretations. Linguistic problems using meaning or structure may be involved. Metalinguistic difficulties with conscious manipulation of language may also be at issue.	For example, a fourth grade student reading a social studies textbook may not be able to explain the content in his own words. Students with these problems often get accused of plagiarism when they have to do reports because they often use resource material verbatim.
Difficulty synthesizing information. The student who cannot glean a central message from text will not respond appropriately when asked to identify the main idea in a paragraph or extended text. He may tend to zero in on details as opposed to global meaning. He will also not be able to give a summary of content heard or read.	If a high school student is taking notes from her textbook, she may write down little pieces of information without writing the key concepts presented in the book.
Poor elaborative language. Students may speak and write in short statements. This problem may be related to many language factors. Some of them may be vocabulary deficits, word retrieval problems, and difficulties with complex syntax. Poor topic elaboration will adversely affect not only fluency of expression but also higher order reading comprehension. Tasks such as inferencing, predicting, interpreting, and evaluating require manipulation of language in one's head or through oral discussion. Students who don't have elaborative language will not have the tools to construct meaning in reading at this level.	A sixth grade student may be asked to write an essay on the causes of the Civil War and may write just a short paragraph or may be asked to make an oral presentation and perform only briefly. A student who lacks extended discourse abilities may not be able to understand elaborated text when reading.
Poor organization and topic maintenance. Some students can't stick to a topic in speaking and writing or can't follow a topic in listening and reading. On the production side, a student may dance around the topic without getting to the point or may insert irrelevant information. On the processing side, a student may get confused with different organizational patterns of discourse or text and lose the meaning. This problem may in part be related to familiarity with different discourse and text structures. Another factor may be lack of attention to cohesion devices such as transition words.	The middle school student who is trying to decipher his world history textbook has trouble making use of chapter headings and subheadings to help him understand the key content being taught. The same student when doing a social studies report turns in difficult-to-follow, randomly constructed information.
Lack of pragmatic language skills. Some students have difficulty in understanding and using language for a variety of purposes. Sometimes they don't recognize different language styles when they listen or read. They may miss subtle nuances and tone. They fail to recognize context.	A high school student reading The Scarlet Letter may have difficulty determining the author's intent or perspective.