Kielihäiriöinen lapsi keskinäisen ymmärtämisen vaalijana

• Tuula Tykkyläinen

Abstrakti

How language-impaired children attempt to verify their understanding and make themselves understood (englanti)

2/2007 (111)

HOW LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED CHILDREN ATTEMPT TO VERIFY THEIR UNDERSTANDING AND MAKE THEMSELVES UNDERSTOOD

The article examines the actions taken by language-impaired five-year-olds to initiate repairs to their understanding during speech and language therapy. The data was collected from seven therapist-child pairs, and all these children had difficulty in understanding and producing speech. This data is also compared with repairs initiated by non-language-impaired five-year-olds in their free time at home with their mothers (8 mother-child pairs). Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis the writer examines how the children attempt to verify their understanding of the tasks allotted to them and how they and the adults attempt to achieve the reciprocal understanding necessary for the tasks at hand.

The results show that the language-impaired children rarely initiated repairs during the course of an allotted task, but they did use a variety of ways to verify what they heard and their comprehension of it. Where the language-impaired children did initiate repairs these concerned either an entire conversation turn or a specific part of it, and they offered their interpretations of the task to the speech therapist for approval or rejection. Repairs initiated by the non-language-impaired children in the study were also infrequent. These were nevertheless of a different kind to those made by the language-impaired children in their speech and language therapy environment. The non-language-impaired children initiated repairs in order to verify the general tasks set by their mothers, and they then defined a set of possible solutions.

Where the language-impaired children had conversation turns in which they sought to verify their understanding this brought a halt to the activity in progress and initiated discussion of how the task was to be interpreted. The speech therapists adopted a multimodal approach in guiding the children, with specific word choices, use of prosody, body actions and gesticulation, and using the task-related material. The therapists also consistently acted in a manner that allowed the child to continue in the role of problem-solver, which was also evident in the termination of activity sequences involving repairs. The article highlights the institutional nature of the interaction during speech therapy. The repairs initiated and the interpretations offered provide the conversation partner with qualitative information on the nature of the comprehension problem and thus provide a valuable resource for assisting the language-impaired child.

Tuula Tykkylinen