writing characters with speech impediments

the basics

Let's get into the basic basic shit.

Characteristics

Speech Impairments

Alright so there are three basic types of speech impairments: Articulation disorders, fluency disorders, voice disorders.

Articulation disorders are errors in the production of speech sounds that may be related to anatomical or physiological limitations in the skeletal, muscular, or neuromuscular support for speech production. There disorders include:

- Omissions (bo for boat)

- Substitutions (wabbit for rabbit)

- Distortions (shlip for sip)

Fluency disorders are difficulties with the rhythm and timing of speech characterized by hesitations, repetitions, or prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases.  Common fluency disorders include:

- Stuttering: rapid-fire repetitions of consonant or vowel sounds especially at the beginning of words, prolongations, hesitations, interjections, and complete verbal blocks

- Cluttering: excessively fast and jerky speech

Voice disorders are problems with the quality or use of one's voice resulting from disorders in the larynx. Voice disorders are characterized by abnormal production and/or absences of vocal quality, pitch, loudness, resonance, and/or duration.

Language Impairments

So there are five basic areas of language impairments: phonological disorders, morphological disorders, semantic disorders, syntactical deficits, and pragmatic difficulties.

Phonological disorders are defined as the abnormal organization of the phonological system, or a significant deficit in speech production or perception. A child with a phonological disorder may be described as hard to understand or as not saying the sounds correctly. Apraxia of speech is a specific phonological disorder where the student may want to speak but has difficulty planning what to say and the motor movements to use.  

Morphological disorders are defined as difficulties with morphological inflections (inflections on nouns, verbs, and adjectives that signal different kinds of meanings).

Semantic disorders are characterized by poor vocabulary development, inappropriate use of word meanings, and/or inability to comprehend word meanings. These students will demonstrate restrictions in word meanings, difficulty with multiple word meanings, excessive use of nonspecific terms (e.g., thing and stuff), and indefinite references (e.g., that and there).

Syntactic deficits are characterized by difficulty in acquiring the rules that govern word order and others aspects of grammar such as subject-verb agreement. Typically, these students produce shorter and less elaborate sentences with fewer cohesive conjunctions than their peers.

Pragmatic difficulties are characterized as problems in understanding and using language in different social contexts. These students may lack an understanding of the rules for making eye contact, respecting personal space, requesting information, and introducing topics.

Impact on Learning

  Speech and language disorders are problems in communication and related areas such as oral motor function. Delays and disorders may range from so subtle that they have little or no impact on daily living and socialization to the inability to produce speech or to understand and use language. Fortunately, only a very small percentage of children are at the most extreme of severity. However, because of the importance of language and communication skills in a child's development even mild to moderate disorders or disturbances can have a profound effect on all aspects of life, sometimes isolating children from their peers and their educational environments.