Anne van Kleeck

A Study of Classroom-Based Phonological Awareness Training for Preschoolers with Speech and/or Language Disorders.

Sixteen preschool children with speech and/or language disorders received phonological awareness training for a period of 9 months. Eight children attended a preschool classroom, and 8 children attended a pre-kindergarten classroom. The classrooms were located in a private school for children with speech and language disorders. A group of older children with speech and/or language disorders served as a nontreatment comparison group. Children in the treatment groups received 15 minutes of small-group lessons twice each week for two semesters. Classroom-based treatment focused on rhyming the first semester and on phoneme awareness the second semester. Rhyming and phoneme awareness activities were adapted from the literature on the development of phonological awareness in typically-achieving children. Results revealed that preschool children with speech and/or language disorders made significant improvement in rhyming and phoneme awareness. Comparisons with the non-treatment group indicated that gains in pho...

Potential Cultural Bias in Training Parents as Conversational Partners With Their Children Who Have Delays in Language Development

This article explores the potential cultural biases in language intervention approaches that train parents to interact with their children who have language delays in ways that will promote languag...

Phonological Awareness Training and Short-Term Working Memory: Clinical Implications

There are two aspects of phonological working memory—phonological coding and phonological recoding—that appear to be important elements in the relationship between phonological working memory and phonological awareness. The authors explain why it makes better sense to train phonological awareness than to train phonological working memory and describe an approach to phonological awareness intervention. Outcomes of an intervention study in which training in phonological awareness affected childrens phonological coding abilities and their early literacy abilities also are summarized.

Preliteracy Domains and Stages: Laying the Foundations for Beginning Reading.

This article begins by providing a model of the domains of preliteracy development that is derived from a model of the later reading process adapted by Adams (1990) from Seidenberg and McClelland (...

When Is Watch and See Warranted? A Response to Paul's 1996 Article, Clinical Implications of the Natural History of Slow Expressive Language Development

We commend Paul for undertaking an investigation that concerns critical clinical and theoretical issues. This type of longitudinal developmental research is exactly what is needed to advance the sc...

Distinguishing Between Casual Talk and Academic Talk Beginning in the Preschool Years: An Important Consideration for Speech-Language Pathologists

Purpose The need for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to consider an academic talk (AT) register in addition to an everyday casual talk (CT) register of oral language with children beginning in ...PURPOSE The need for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to consider an academic talk (AT) register in addition to an everyday casual talk (CT) register of oral language with children beginning in the preschool years is presented, the AT and CT registers are distinguished in a comprehensive manner, ideas regarding AT language assessment are proposed, and suggestions for fostering childrens skills with the AT register are offered. METHOD Extant research and scholarship from a wide variety of disciplines are integrated and organized. RESULTS The author discusses the role of the SLP in supporting AT skills beginning in the preschool years and the added risk of difficulties with the AT register for children with language impairment who are from diverse backgrounds. Two broad categories-social-interactive and cognitive-that give rise to linguistic features that differentiate between the CT and AT registers are deduced from extant scholarship. CONCLUSIONS SLPs should consider childrens competence with the AT register as they work to prepare preschoolers and older children for the language demands of school.

Distinguishing between casual talk and academic talk beginning in the preschool years

Purpose The need for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to consider an academic talk (AT) register in addition to an everyday casual talk (CT) register of oral language with children beginning in ...PURPOSE The need for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to consider an academic talk (AT) register in addition to an everyday casual talk (CT) register of oral language with children beginning in the preschool years is presented, the AT and CT registers are distinguished in a comprehensive manner, ideas regarding AT language assessment are proposed, and suggestions for fostering childrens skills with the AT register are offered. METHOD Extant research and scholarship from a wide variety of disciplines are integrated and organized. RESULTS The author discusses the role of the SLP in supporting AT skills beginning in the preschool years and the added risk of difficulties with the AT register for children with language impairment who are from diverse backgrounds. Two broad categories-social-interactive and cognitive-that give rise to linguistic features that differentiate between the CT and AT registers are deduced from extant scholarship. CONCLUSIONS SLPs should consider childrens competence with the AT register as they work to prepare preschoolers and older children for the language demands of school.

Current Roles and Continuing Needs of Speech-Language Pathologists Working in Neonatal Intensive Care Units

This study surveyed 45 speech-language pathologists working with infants who are medically fragile in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) across the United States. It explored current roles in th...

Intervention Activities and Strategies for Promoting Academic Language inPreschoolers and Kindergartners

Teaching academic language has recently become a separate focus from teaching subject content for schoolaged children, but it is rarely considered with preschoolers and kindergartners. The critical importance of fostering academic language before children enter elementary school has recently been posited and supported by various strands of research, and the term academic talk has been used to capture the fact that early exposure to and use of this register is in the oral modality only. There is a pressing need for an early focus on this register for children with language impairments, given that their language weaknesses often foreshadow academic difficulties. In this article, an integrative framework of academic talk developed by van Kleeck is used to discuss concrete ways in which professionals can foster the social-interactive and cognitive features of academic talk among young prereading children. A focus on these social-interactive and cognitive features, which provide a coherent and accessible conceptual framework for the interventionist, automatically recruits the many specific linguistic features that have been found to be characteristic of academic language. Previous research has directly or indirectly shown that preschool and kindergarten children’s exposure individually to each of these features is associated with future academic success. However, this previous research has not provided a construct for considering the full constellation of features that combine to create the academic talk register. This article provides ideas for approaching these features individually at first, but then posits the need to gradually combine a focus on more and more features simultaneously to more completely reflect the nature of the academic talk register.

Do acting out verbs with dolls and comparison learning between scenes boost toddlers’ verb comprehension?

To better understand how toddlers integrate multiple learning strategies to acquire verbs, we compared sensorimotor recruitment and comparison learning because both strategies are thought to boost childrens access to scene-level information. For sensorimotor recruitment, we tested having toddlers use dolls as agents and compared this strategy with having toddlers observe another person enact verbs with dolls. For comparison learning, we compared providing pairs of: (a) training scenes in which animate objects with similar body-shapes maintained agent/patient roles with (b) scenes in which objects with dissimilar body-shapes switched agent/patient roles. Only comparison learning boosted verb comprehension.