Here's a quick crash course for SLPs in identifying clauses -- an important element in language sample analysis and a critical building block for expressive language
*Free activities and downloads below!*
I am a self-proclaimed language nerd and pretty proud of it.
But I have to confess that I started to doubt my language nerd-dom when I got into the weeds of language sample analysis; I was suddenly out of my depth with syntax concepts like clauses, subordinating conjunctions, and determiners. If I ever learned this stuff in school, I certainly don't remember!
(See my post here to learn how I finally got language sample analysis right.)
But these concepts are important to know, both for language sample analysis and as a building block for some really powerful language therapy.
I recently watched a webinar called When Explanations Fall Apart: Discourse-Level Intervention for Students with DLD, by Bonnie Singer, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, and Anthony Bashir, Ph.D., CCC-SLP. They explained how important subordinate clauses are when working with kids with developmental language disorder (DLD).
(For 6 important facts every SLP needs to know about DLD, see this post.)
In a nutshell, Singer and Bashir outlined a variety of different explanation types (something all kids have to generate with increasing levels of sophistication as they develop). Singer and Bashir then illustrated how we can't formulate effective explanations without being able to produce sentences that contain subordinate clauses!
It was at this very moment that my brain exploded.
Once I regained my composure, I set out on a mission to become an expert on clauses and conjunctions -- and subordinate clauses and conjunctions in particular.
Now that I'm an expert (language nerd status reinstated!), I've made this handy chart about clauses for SLPs. Why didn't this already exist?! (Just click on the chart if you want to download it on the free downloads page.)
As you can see, subordinate clauses can be adverbial, nominative, or relative, and they begin with subordinating conjunctions like because, if, that, when, and where. This site has a nice list of many of the subordinating conjunctions.
From now on, I will be prioritizing these sentence types as grammar goals for speech therapy as early as possible with my students because I now know that it will help unlock their ability to produce lengthier sentences, explain more complex ideas and, as a result, give better explanations.
How can we target these grammar goals in speech therapy?
I'll be embedding the use of subordinate clauses as a grammar goal in my narrative intervention. See this post for more details.
I'll be using this free activity to target compound and complex sentence formation within literature-based therapy.
I'll be embedding the use of subordinate clauses as a grammar goal in my writing intervention. I LOVE quill.org for teaching kids how to type sentences and it allows you to target the skill of creating multi-clausal sentences. It's also free!
I'll be paying close attention to my students' use of subordinate clauses when I obtain language samples. See this post to find out how I finally got language sample analysis right.
And I'll be using this excellent chart created by Susan Ebbels, SLT, PhD, and Amanda Owen Van Horne, PhD, CCC-SLP (be sure to toggle through all the pages of the spreadsheet). It provides a guide for grammatical targets in a developmental sequence. (Note: We should be aware of any cultural and linguistic differences of the populations we serve; however, syntax, in general, is less dialect-dependent than morphology.)
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Enjoy!
