Thursday 26 September 2013

Raising awareness of language learning impairments


A couple of years ago I did a Google search for ‘Specific language impairment’. I was  appalled by what I found. The top hit was a video by a chiropractor who explained he’d read a paper about neurological basis of language difficulties; he proceeded to mangle its contents, concluding that cranial osteopathy would help affected children.

I’ve previously described how I got together with colleagues in 2012 to try and remedy this situation, culminating in a campaign for Raising Awareness of Language Learning Impairments (RALLI). The practicalities have sometimes been challenging but I’m pleased to say that the collection of videos on our RALLI site has now attracted over 90,000 hits, providing an accessible and evidence-based source of information about developmental language impairments. As well as research-based films we have videos with practical information for parents, children and teachers.

So here, for those of you interested in this topic, is an index of what we have so far:

Background to RALLI

Research topics

Information for teachers

Support for parents and children

International
     Spanish translations/subtitled versions
Reference  
Bishop, D. V. M., Clark, B., Conti-Ramsden, G., Norbury, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2012). RALLI: An internet campaign for raising awareness of language learning impairments Child Language Teaching & Therapy, 28 (3), 259-262 DOI: 10.1177/0265659012459467

7 comments:

  1. I'm wondering if you would have ressources about SLI and "multilingual" children.

    Are they more likely to develop such impairment?
    What should we expect for their learning curve?

    As a post-doc myself, I've been travelling in different countries with my now 2yo daugther. She's definitely not particularly fast on that and I would want to get more information, to make sure the situation could not be negative for her.

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  2. As it happens, we have been working on a couple of videos on this very topic and hope to post them in the next few weeks. General consensus is that multilingualism is not disadvantageous for language development.

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  3. Great! Looking forward to watch these videos. Thanks.

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  4. Could you develop a section for SLT's regarding advice and intervention resources please.

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  6. Could you have a section relating to application to and support at University? No University disability services mention SLI specifically, although all mention dyslexia and autism.

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    Replies
    1. Very good point. We are increasingly being asked about this and we do hope to add some material in due course.

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