Report on Language Development. The participant is a male toddler seventeen months old. Of particular interest is the fact that he is the older of a pair of twins. The reason why I decided to observe this participant is the fact that this toddler was bor

Receptive Language Development

Introduction

The majority of us take our capability to communicate for granted. We think of something to speak, open our mouths and the language comes out. Language may appear to be straightforward; however the communication process is actually very complicated. As communicators, we use our language capability to understand and give meaning to what others say to us and to communicate our desires, feelings, and emotions in ways that others will comprehend. It is sometimes useful to compare performance of tasks that assess an individual’s receptive language ability.

Hult, Howard, and Fahey (2011) hold that “language development occurs when the communicative environment is rich and positive” (p. 138). This implies that there are two ends to any communication: the person sending the message (the expressive language) and the person who is receiving the message (the receptive language). The latter is referred to as receptive language development because it is related to the ability to understand what is being communicated when one is at the receiving end of the conversation. This involves, first of all, the ability to listen, which requires a certain amount of focus and the receiver’s ability to understand. It also usually includes what is understood when reading in general and the speed with which the recipient of the message processes it (Bowen, 1998).

Because people’s abilities are not the same at both ends of the conversation spectrum, many times this difference in abilities results in failure to properly express oneself or in failure to understand the message that is being sent. What may make communication even more problematic is the fact that many people suffer from language acquisition disabilities. One particular issue in relation to language acquisition is what is referred to as language reception disorder, which is linked to a problem in central auditory processing. These types of problems usually involve the inability of an individual to understand what is being said to him/her (Better Health Channel, 2011).

Participants

For this research paper, I decided to opt for one participant. The participant is a male toddler seventeen months old. Of particular interest is the fact that he is the older of a pair of twins. The reason why I decided to observe this participant is the fact that this toddler was born 8 weeks early and I wanted to see how his language acquisitions skills had developed despite the face he was not born under normal circumstances. In addition, the child and I already had a well-established rapport and this pre-existing relationship allowed the child to feel at ...

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Participants

Procedure

The procedure involved a compiled book containing a series of 79 different pictures. Prior to commencing the procedure, I explained to the parent of the participant what would happen during the observation. I explained to the parent this was a classic exercise to observe the language development of her young child. In accordance with this, I passed on to the parent information about, as well as, a proper description of the teaching technique to be used. Next, I picked a quiet location where I could run my tests and observe the child without any interruptions. A quiet place would make it easier for the child to focus on the tasks at hand.

It was then time to allow for the participant’s orientation that would eventually allow me to take a positive and fair approach to this assessment. I therefore allowed the child to become familiar with the questions that were the focus of the test and the materials that would be used. I also had to decide on the approach to take throughout the entire test phase. Since I was dealing with a toddler and since toddlers have short attention spans, I opted for a play and observe approach. Thus, the testing procedure was turned into a game for the child. In fact, after each correct response, clapping and praise were used to encourage the child to stay focused and to function at his best. The child was asked to point or touch the picture corresponding to the response I was asking for. If, the child got a wrong answer, I would tell him what should have been the proper answer. I would then give the child a demonstration. For example, if he was supposed to say that “the eyes are closed” in a particular picture, I would spend a few minutes playing “open eyes” and “close eyes” with the child in an attempt to teach him the difference between the two.

The child did become inattentive a few times during the process. At such times, we would take short breaks and leave the quiet area to get a drink or take a walk outside. We would then resume the procedure around five minutes later.

After the test was administered, I gave the results to the parent and provided a teaching technique for the parent to use. The parent was given the list of test words and the picture book and asked to sit with the child every evening for a week and review the test words and pictures as if they were reading a storybook. I asked the parent to turn this teaching process into a game for the child in order to help encourage the child’s comprehension of the selected words. I asked the parent to compliment the child when the child put a specific item in the box. In addition, I also asked the parent to compliment the child when his eyes were closed at bedtime. I assured the parent that there was no need to devote a great deal of time to teaching the child and the test had no pass or fail results. The parent’s teaching technique was very relaxed and was not done every evening for a week as suggested; therefore limiting the ability to foresee the child’s development had the teaching occurred on a more regular basis. The parent reviewed the pictures with the child a total of two times and did not devote any other time to teaching the correct responses in the everyday activity.

Results

This section of this paper provides a brief summary of the results of the testing. The table below shows 32 words that the participant was exposed to and the results obtained during two attempts. Both these attempts are divided into correct and incorrect response.

On the first attempt, the participant got twenty (20) correct answers and twelve (12) wrong answers. On the second attempt, the child got twenty three (23) correct answers and nine (9) incorrect answers.

Discussion

The results above indicate that the participant had a good level of receptive language development in that he in a very short time became able to understand that a certain picture stood for a particular word.

The background environment of the child played a very important function in this receptive language development. As one will notice from the choice of words in the table above, the child comprehended words that were part of everyday life such as scissors, bread, cat, cup, shoe, and crackers. The words that he missed were less common such as light bulb, dog not in wagon, under the chair, wet, and lady.

Considering the fact that his parent did not keep a stable schedule and did not fully cooperate when she failed to regularly follow up the child’s language development for a whole week as had been suggested, the participant showed improvement even if he was exposed to the words only twice. If the parent had used better teaching techniques and had been committed to the participant’s teaching on a regular basis, the child’s receptive language development most likely would have improved even more.

From this study carried out of the participant’s receptive language ability, it seems that the child’s language development is progressing in a normal way, especially since the child can learn the connection between an image and a word at quite a progressive pace.

References

Better Health Channel. (2011). Retrieved from .

Bowen, C. (1998). Ages and Stages: Developmental milestones for receptive and expressive language development. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/devel2.htm

Hulit, L., Howard, M., & Fahey, R. (2011). Born to talk: An introduction to speech and language development (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Language Development. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2011, from .