Reading

Reading consists of two related but distinct components: decoding automaticity and comprehension. Decoding automaticity is the ability to recognize and read words quickly and accurately, while comprehension is the ability to derive meaning from those words. Reading fluency is the combined effect of automaticity and comprehension. It is the ability to read written language quickly, accurately, and with appropriate phrasing and expression (prosody) in order to understand and comprehend the meaning.

Decoding Automaticity

The most prevalent language-based learning disability (LBLD) is a reading disorder. Dyslexia occurs when a student’s primary difficulty is decoding written text. Most students with dyslexia struggle with processing language at the phonemic and morphemic levels. Their hearing acuity is normal, but they process sounds differently, which makes rapid and accurate decoding challenging. Often, these students are diagnosed with a phonological processing disorder.

Other students’ underdeveloped reading skills result from differences in visual processing, which interfere with the development of reading automaticity. These students may be diagnosed with a visual processing disorder.

In addition to hindering the development of decoding automaticity, both phonological and visual processing differences also impair spelling skills. These challenges lead to difficulties with reading comprehension and writing abilities.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension difficulties are generally secondary to other language challenges. Some students struggle with decoding written text, misreading important words and misunderstanding information. Other students may read so slowly or focus so much on sounding out words that the meaning is lost. Either group could likely comprehend the text if it were read aloud. On the other hand, students with limited vocabulary or a diminished understanding of syntax—such as those diagnosed with mixed receptive-expressive language disorder—may have no difficulty decoding text quickly and accurately, but face significant challenges in comprehending what they read or what has been read to them.

While many students with language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) fail to develop automaticity or fluency without direct, intensive intervention, some manage to develop enough reading skills to reach middle or even high school without their weak skills being noticed by parents or teachers. The difficulty often becomes apparent when the volume and complexity of the reading become too challenging for them to keep up without assistance.

Writing

Writing involves both fine motor skills and two discrete yet related language skills: spelling (orthography) and expressive language. A fluent writer can spell and express ideas coherently in writing. Fluent spelling reflects mastery of the phonemic, morphemic, and semantic aspects of language. Fluent written expression reflects spelling proficiency plus mastery of syntax within an appropriate discourse structure. Difficulty with any facet of language, from phonemes to discourse, can hinder the development of fluent writing skills.

Language-based writing difficulties typically coincide with challenges in other areas of language. Students who struggle with decoding often also struggle with spelling. Students who struggle with spoken language are likely to produce writing with limited vocabulary, confused sentence structure, insufficient or excessive information, or disorganized arguments or narratives. These difficulties may result from an expressive language disorder (difficulty producing learned language) or a mixed receptive-expressive language disorder (difficulty acquiring and producing language). Listening to and observing students as they speak and write can help pinpoint the locus of a particular student’s difficulty, especially when combined with formal evaluations.

Most students with LBLD require explicit, intensive, and individualized instruction to develop spelling and writing skills. As with reading, however, some students develop enough skills to get by until they become overwhelmed by the intensive demands of writing as they move through middle school and high school. It’s also important to note that some students have difficulty writing due to poorly developed fine motor and visual-spatial skills. These students may struggle with writing neatly, typing quickly, and organizing words clearly on a page. Although such difficulties often coexist with language-based challenges, they are not language-based themselves and require different types of interventions.

Listening and Speaking

While reading and writing must be explicitly taught to all children, oral language skills (listening and speaking) generally develop naturally and in relatively predictable patterns as infants and young children are exposed to them.

Receptive Language

Receptive language skills enable us to understand spoken and written words, sentences, and nonverbal communication. Underdeveloped skills in this area make it difficult to process and remember spoken and written language, despite intact hearing and visual acuity. Students may misunderstand words, sentences, and more complex information, as well as nonverbal cues such as body language, pictures, and diagrams. As a result, both classroom learning and social interaction can present significant challenges.

Expressive Language

Expressive language skills enable us to speak and write clearly, meaningfully, and efficiently. Because these skills rely on receptive language abilities, students with receptive difficulties often exhibit expressive challenges as well. Some students who comprehend language may struggle to use it effectively. Limited speech, a lack of specific language, word-finding difficulties, talking too little or too much, difficulty making a point, omissions of critical sentence parts, and unusual syntax are examples of expressive language difficulties. Often, students who struggle with expressive language cannot express what they know unless they learn specific strategies for effective communication.

As with reading and writing, some students may not exhibit significant weaknesses until the increasing language demands of school exceed the strategies they developed to get by in previous years. Students with a language-based learning disability that affects receptive or expressive language skills require early, direct, intensive, and individualized intervention. Since reading and writing skills develop in relation to listening and speaking skills, difficulty in any one skill area can impede a student’s progress in others. Interventions must address the full range of a student’s difficulties.

Mathematics

Math proficiency requires more than simply calculating answers. It involves problem-solving, communicating mathematical concepts, reasoning, establishing proof, and representing information in various forms (PBS, 2002). Many of these skills require not only numerical reasoning but also fluency in oral and written language. Weak language proficiency can, therefore, impede progress in math. Students may struggle with processing oral directions, decoding written directions or word problems, reading or writing equations, or explaining their problem-solving process in words. While their number sense, arithmetic, and even mathematical thinking may be strong, their language weaknesses can interfere with their ability to learn and demonstrate mathematical knowledge.

Other students, who have proficient language skills but struggle with math, may have a math disability—sometimes referred to as dyscalculia. Mathematics difficulties can arise for a variety of reasons and may emerge at any time during a student’s schooling. As with difficulties in acquiring language and literacy skills, students who do not receive appropriate instruction to address their math challenges may avoid math and fall further behind their peers as they progress through school.

Student Profiles

Students have unique learning profiles shaped by their educational experiences, learning and thinking styles, personality traits, and specific needs related to language acquisition and use. All students who struggle in school—particularly those with LBLD—benefit from structured, multisensory, skills-based instruction. Each requires individualized instruction tailored to their specific needs.

The following student profiles highlight different aspects of five students: Lan, Carlos, Ayanna, Elijah, and Jason. Each faces challenges in school that teachers must analyze and address. These profiles are composites of several real students, with names changed for privacy.

Language-Based Interventions

As you read about the language-based interventions for each student, keep in mind the following questions: 

• What are some of the pros and cons of the language-based interventions described? 
• What questions would you want answered about each student’s program if you were that student? 
• What questions would you want answered about each student’s program if you were part of the student? 

LAN, GRADE 2: As a result of diagnostic assessments, Lan has had several interventions and progress assessment plans implemented. She is now in her school’s language-based program. Part of the curriculum includes an intensive program to remediate Lan’s phonological processing disorder and a remedial language class focused on strategies for organizing oral and written language. In addition, a counselor and Lan’s teachers coach her in strategies for managing frustration and communicating her thoughts to others. Lan’s content area teachers, with the help of special educators, provide her with the support she needs to read grade-level content material and the structure and cues necessary to express her knowledge.

CARLOS, GRADE 4: He started on new medication, which caused some problems and required adjustments several times. Now, Carlos, his teachers, and his parents report that he is more alert and less impulsive with his schoolwork. In response to his self-reports about his difficulties, Carlos began attending an after-school homework club where he completes his work in a quiet space under a teacher’s supervision and can leave it in his desk to turn in the next day. In addition, Carlos’s teacher agreed to try two changes. First, she began providing an example for all written assignments and projects, as well as step-by-step instructions for students to follow. Second, she started to check students’ assignment folders to ensure they wrote down their homework.

AYANNA, GRADE 6: She was placed in a self-contained language-based classroom for middle school students, where she received intensive instruction in language skills. Though she has made some progress, her teachers remain concerned. Outside specialists were consulted and highlighted that, while Ayanna has a language-based learning disability like the other students in the class, her profile is very different. She has below-average scores on tests of cognitive ability and limited language acquisition in both English and Hindi, her native language. Ayanna, and others like her, need the same instructional approaches as other students with LBLD, but they need them more intensively and for a longer period. Ayanna and two of her classmates now receive daily sessions in vocabulary development, sentence construction and manipulation for oral and written expression, and reading comprehension strategies, using texts that are accessible given their level of language development.

ELIJAH, GRADE 8: His courses now take place within an inclusionary language-based program at his middle school. In this program, students with and without learning disabilities work together in classes facilitated by a content teacher and a special educator. All teachers use the same vocabulary to instruct students in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and study skills, and they implement consistent teaching strategies across the classes. In addition to these courses, Elijah takes a second language arts class that is specially designed to help students with expressive language difficulties. In the class, students learn and practice strategies to recall and organize language for oral and written expression.

JASON, GRADE 10: He was given access to digitized versions of his school texts and assigned to a daily resource room for reading and writing instruction. Over a period of months, and with increasing time in the resource room, Jason made progress but began to miss school days and talk more about dropping out to pursue his landscaping business with his brother. His performance on the school’s standardized assessment system (a predictor of state assessment performance) was still in the failing range in language arts. After a full educational evaluation, the recommendation was that Jason receive intensive, individualized tutoring to remediate his reading and written language disorder. He now attends daily tutoring sessions with two other students to remediate deficits in phonological processing. He also moved to a language arts class taught by a former special education teacher.

Language and Literacy Checklists

The checklists linked in the “Strategies to Download” section below focus on specific concerns about students’ language and literacy development. Specifying students’ areas of difficulty (e.g., constructing sentences with clear syntax rather than just writing) gives us language to use with parents, evaluators, and students and guides our instruction. They should not take the place of formal educational evaluations. 

References: 

PBS. (2002). Misunderstood minds. Basics of mathematics. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/misunderstoodminds/mathbasics.html