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Speech Pathology Australia: Speech Pathology in Schools Project
The impact of speech, language and
communication needs (SLCN)
Speech, language and communication skills
such as knowledge of the sounds of language,
phonological awareness, vocabulary, and
the ability to understand sentence and story
structure underpin learning. Communication is
the means by which learning is facilitated and
assessed. The curriculum is heavily reliant on
oral language skills; without strong foundational
communication skills children are at risk of falling
behind in many areas. When children have
ongoing difficulties in language-learning the
gap is compounded between typical language
learners and those with speech language and
communication needs.
Children’s communication abilities strongly
predict their later reading skills, with a sixfold
increased chance of reading problems for
children with poor language skills. Children
with developmental language disorders have
demonstrably weaker skills in areas (such as
their ability to remember, discriminate and
identify sounds in words, or to understand the
structure of stories) that are crucial for reading
development. In addition, their speech, language
and communication needs may impact on their
vocabulary, verbal reasoning skills, and their
ability to analyse the structure or meaning of
words and sentences, so that even if they can
decode words while reading, they may not
understand.
Children’s social communication skills may
also be compromised, so that they have
difficulty interacting appropriately to make
friends, participate in conversations, and to
negotiate and make choices, all of which are
an important part of school life. Their problems
include use of inappropriate strategies for
negotiation and conflict resolution and difficulty
in understanding non-verbal social cues such as
facial expressions and gestures. These problems
impact on their ability to interact socially and
problems increase as children grow.
Children with speech, language and
communication needs are at greater risk of
bullying and report less school enjoyment than
peers. Over half of children with poor speech,
language and communication skills also have a
behavioural disorder, further reducing learning
opportunities, options and effectiveness, and
leading to disengagement from school.
Research into the outcomes for children with
language impairment in early childhood identified
that these children were twice as likely to show
internalising and externalising behavioural
problems in later childhood and adolescence.
Further, children with a history of language
impairment were over 1.5 times more likely to
meet the criteria for ADHD in later childhood
or adolescence than their typically developing
peers.