Oral language is often associated with vocabulary as the main component. However, oral language is comprised of much more. In the broadest definition, oral language consists of five areas: phonology, morphology, vocabulary, discourse, and pragmatics. The acquisition of these skills often begins at a young age, before students begin focusing on print-based concepts such as sound-symbol correspondence and decoding. Because these skills are often developed early in life, children with limited oral language ability are typically at a distinct disadvantage by the time they enter kindergarten (Fielding et al., 2007).
Therefore, children with a persistent problem learning language known as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), are at an increased risk of poorer academic and social performance. Frequently, these children go undiagnosed and thus don’t receive the specialised assistance that would help them succeed. This occurs in spite of the fact that approximately two children in every classroom of 30 have DLD, making it five times more common than autism spectrum disorder and 50 times more common than hearing impairment (Norbury et al., 2016). Children with DLD are also six times more likely to have reading disabilities and four times more likely to have math disabilities than other children (Adlof & Hogan, 2018; Catts et al., 2002; Komesidou & Hogan, 2019).
Weak language skills can be challenging to recognise, so many children with DLD are instead identified with a learning disability or attentional disorder due to poor performance in school.
Main Areas of Oral Language Skills:
PHONOLOGY refers to the system of sounds within a particular language. Establishing a phonological system begins in infancy, when children learn to listen to speech and gain the ability to distinguish syllables, words, and phrases. As they grow, children start to gain an understanding of other aspects of phonological awareness, such as blending, segmenting, and manipulating sounds, rhyme and alliteration. Fostering a child’s phonological awareness can have a tremendous impact on later academic success. Research has shown that early phonological awareness is related both to reading and writing ability.
MORPHOLOGY refers to morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in language, and how they are combined to form words. For example, the word ‘cups’ has 2 morphemes: <cup> refers to a vessel for holding liquid, and <s> denotes the plural form. Morphological awareness refers to a child’s awareness and ability to manipulate these small units of meaning and it begins to develop as early as the preschool years (Carlisle, 1995).
SEMANTICS refers to the meaning of words and phrases, including vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary knowledge can be broken down into two distinct categories: spoken vocabulary, which includes words used informally in conversation, and academic vocabulary, which refers to words used in academic talk or text. Just like phonological and morphological awareness, academic vocabulary is another significant contributor to reading ability.
SYNTAX, sometimes simply referred to as grammar, is the set of rules that dictate the ways in which words and phrases can be combined into sentences and paragraphs. It is essential to use correct syntax in order to communicate messages that are meaningful and easy to understand. From an early age, syntax influences the way in which children communicate spoken language. As they age, the importance of syntax extends to written language as well. In fact, syntax has been shown to be a predictor of writing success, which in turn impacts success in higher education and employment later in life.
PRAGMATICS refers to the social use of language. This includes a variety of social norms regarding how to participate in communication including how to take turns in a conversation, interact in a group, maintain personal space, and use appropriate behaviour with different communication partners or in different settings. Not only do children who struggle with pragmatic skills have difficulty interacting with peers and forming social relationships, but many also have underdeveloped early literacy skills due to difficulty participating in classroom activities.
