Grammar and Syntax: Developing School-Age Children's Oral and Written Language Skills

Grammar and Syntax: Developing School-Age Children's Oral and Written Language Skills provides insight for clinical speech-language pathologists (SLPs) as well as students and faculty in communication sciences and disorders programs. Offering a practicing speech-language pathologist's perspective on school-age language development, this professional reference book focuses on later language development and the crucial role oral grammar and syntax plays in successful academic performance. This resource synthesizes the four main components of professional expertise for SLPs: academic and theoretical knowledge, strategies for gathering diagnostic evidence, the ability to seek, understand, and apply evolving scientific evidence, and the application of therapeutic strategies. Designed to encourage creative approaches to curriculum-based speech-language therapy practices, Grammar and Syntax: Developing School-Age Children's Oral and Written Language Skills provides the foundation SLPs need to help children and adolescents achieve academic success. Key Features Anticipation guides at the beginning of each chapter stimulate readers to prepare for reading Bolded key terms and a comprehensive glossary improve retention of material Related resources in addition to cited sources provide jumping off points for deeper understanding Tables of language development references to use at-a-glance An evidence-based approach that references many primary and historical sources, including the "big names" in each area of content A unique combination of the perspectives of language development and language disorders with literacy development and literacy difficulties. A PluralPlus companion website

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgements Reviewers Chapter 1. Introduction: Educational Contexts for Improving School-Age Learners' Grammar and Syntax Anticipation Guide A Professional Reference Book Grammar and Syntax: Professional Skills for Descriptions, Diagnosis, and Interventions Terminology Used in this Book: "Language Impairment" Language Deficits Versus Language Differences Chapters 2 through 6: The Developmental Trajectory for Grammar and Syntax Learners who will Benefit when Professionals Apply the Content of this Text Learners who will Benefit when Professionals Apply the Content of this Text Populations of Students who Have Language Needs that may Impede their Success in Language Arts and Literacy Instructional Contexts A Closer Look at Diagnostic Designations Professional Considerations for SLPs Mainstream Education: An Emphasis on Metalanguage Educational Systems: The Contexts that Surround School-based Speech-Language Therapy Collaborative Goals and Service Delivery Chapter 2. The Development of Grammar and Syntax: Foundations from First Words through the Preschool Years Anticipation Guide Language Form Structural Linguistics and Generative Grammar Grammaticality Syntactic Competence and Performance Defining and Describing Morphology Free Morphemes and Bound Morphemes Defining and Describing Syntax Grammatical Categories Grammatical Person Grammatical Number Grammatical Tense Grammatical Aspect Grammatical Mood Grammatical Voice Grammatical Gender The Development of Morphology and Syntax Order of Emergence of Morphological Forms Order of Emergence of Syntactic Forms Successive Single Word Utterances Linear Syntactic Relationships Defining and Describing Language Content and Its Relationship to Form Content: A Fund of Information Content Categories Verb Phrase Constituents Negation Question Formation Pronouns Measuring Length and Complexity of Utterances Mean Length of Utterance MLU as Corresponding to Syntactic Forms Accuracy and Representativeness of MLU T-Units C-Units Manifestations of Impairment of Morphology and Syntax in Preschool Children Syntactic Regularities and Syntactic Variation Developmental Constructs Characteristics of Form Difficulties Morpheme Use Phrase Construction and Linguistic Productivity Negation Question Formation Syntactic and Morphological Development in the Early School Years Phrase Elaborations Noun Phrase Elaboration Verb Phrase Elaboration Forming and Combining Clauses Coordination Complementation Embedding Passive Voice Pronouns Conjunctions Prepositions Later-Developing Morphology Summary: Later Developmental Expectations Negation Contractions Question Formation Sentence Formation and Clausal Constructions (Sometimes Appearing as Noun Phrase Elaborations and Verb Phrase Elaborations) Tense, Aspect, Mood, Voice Manifestations of Syntactic Impairment in the School-age Years Language and Communication Impairment in Receptive Syntax Impairment in Syntactic Regularities and Syntactic Variation African American English Features of Morphology and Syntax Chapter 3. Cognitive-Linguistic, Psycholinguistic, and Pragmatic Language Factors That Influence the Competent Use of Grammar and Syntax throughout Childhood and Adolescence Anticipation Guide The Magic of Turning Four Cognitive-Linguistic Competence as Foundational to Grammatical and Syntactic Skills Cognitive Connectionism Information Processing and Syntactic Abilities Psycholinguistic Explanations for Grammatical and Syntactic Abilities Pragmatic Language Competence as Foundational to Grammatical and Syntactic Skills The Cognitive Processes Underlying Pragmatic Competence Pragmatic Language Purposes: Ideational, Interpersonal, and Textual Communicative Acts and their Syntactic Properties Typologies of Message Function and their Syntactic Properties Pragmatic Cohesion The Pragmatics of Discourse Social Pragmatics and Linguistic Pragmatics Social Validity Manifestations of Pragmatic Language Impairments How Language is Impaired: Structural and Functional Deficits Chapter 4. Grammar and Syntax in School-Age Children and Adolescents: Conceptualizations and Measurements Anticipation Guide Describing the Form of Language: The Grammatical and Syntactic Elements of Mature English Learners' Ability to Develop Syntactic Language Complexity Receptive Language Influences on Expressive Syntactic Maturity Learning and Memory Social Interactionism, Social Constructivism, and Dynamic Assessment of Grammar and Syntax Metalinguistic Awareness of Syntax Deficits in Grammar and Syntax Syntax Delay Versus Syntax Disorder Syntax Delay Syntax Disorder Commonalities Between Syntax Delay and Syntax Disorder Linguistic Considerations for Measurement of Older Learners' Syntactic Abilities Grammatical Elements Grammatical Elements Computational Analysis: Mean Length of Utterance in Morphemes Clausal Structures Clausal Elements Used in Grammatical Transformations of Sentences How the Use of Clausal Structures Matures Approaches to Language Sampling and Analysis for School Age Children and Adolescents Elicitation of a Language Sample Manual and Computer-Based Computational Analyses of Language Samples Manual Computational Analysis: Clausal Structures Measured by The Subordination Index Computer-Based Analyses Testing to Reveal Grammatical and Syntactic Capabilities and Performance The Utility of Information from Achievement Testing, Abilities Testing, and Diagnostic Testing Considerations for Choosing Commercially Available Tests of Grammar and Syntax Commercially Available Tests of Grammar and Syntax The Properties of Tests of Grammar and Syntax Items that Test Receptive and Expressive Syntax Item Analyses of Tests of Grammar and Syntax Test Questions that Probe Grammatical and Syntactic Skills: Performance Demands Test Questions that Probe Grammatical and Syntactic Skills: Metalinguistic Awareness Clinician-constructed Probes of Grammatical and Syntactic Skills Enhancing Metalinguistic Capabilities Metalinguistic Strategies for School Age and Adolescent Learners Therapy Should Have SPICE Chapter 5. Reading Comprehension: Processing Sentence-Level Grammar and Syntax to Understand the Meaning of Text Anticipation Guide Language Form and Reading Comprehension SLPs' Services to Aid Language Form and Reading Comprehension Spoken Grammar as Preparation for Reading Comprehension Research on SLPs' Interventions Related to Syntax and Literacy The Cognitive-Linguistic Elements of Reading Comprehension Language Form is Essential to Learning the Meanings of Words Prosody and Sentence Reading The Importance of Reading Comprehension for Older Students The Comprehension Demands of Informational Text Reading Difficulties in School Age and Adolescent Learners Achieving Adult Literacy Sentence-Level Grammar and Syntax: Identifying Students' Needs Response to Intervention (RTI) and Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) Frameworks Sentence-Level Grammar and Syntax: Suggestions for Interventions Interventions for Grammar and Syntax in the Context of the Multiple Cognitive-Linguistic Skills Needed for Reading Plan for Activities for Before, During, and After Reading Mini-Lessons Linguistic Microstructures and Macrostructures Prosodic Interventions Grammar Instruction Cloze Procedures Designed to Generate Grammatical Elements Language Objectives for Grammar and Syntax Based on Academic Standards Chapter 6. Improving Grammar and Syntax in Written Language Anticipation Guide School Writing Expectations The Components of Skilled Writing Diagnosing Written Language Difficulties Written Language Difficulties: Structural and Functional Deficits Syntactic Knowledge and Syntactic Processing Formal Assessment Informal Assessment Sampling and/or Inventorying Written Language Performance Informally Assessing Grammar and Syntax Using Probes A Written Language Assessment Tool Interventions to Develop the Grammatical and Syntactic Components of Skilled Writing A Model for a Continuum of Interventions Content, Process, and Product: Three Considerations for Interventions Grammar and Syntax Instruction and the Teaching of Writing Grammatical and Syntactic Necessities Oral Language Usage to Guide Written Language Targets Written Sentence Skills Sentence Expansions Intersentential Syntactic Skills Revising and Editing Interventions to Develop Skills in Written Composition Semantic Content: Language Choices When Writing Pragmatic Consideration for Composition Skills Glossary References

About the Author :
Monica Gordon-Pershey, EdD, CCC-SLP, is a Professor in the Communication Sciences and Disorders Program, School of Health Sciences, at Cleveland State University (CSU), Cleveland, OH. Since joining CSU in 1995, her teaching experience has included a variety of courses in communication sciences and disorders, with a specialization in graduate language disorders courses. Dr. Gordon-Pershey has authored numerous articles, chapters, and presentations on language and literacy and the pre-professional and professional development of speech-language pathologists and teachers.