Receptive language difficulties in children

Receptive language impairments are a common difficulty in children- affecting their ability to understand both spoken and written language. This means they have difficulty following directions in class and might struggle to follow conversations.These children are an important population for speech and language therapy as they have been found to be particularly at risk of poor literacy, behaviour and social outcomes.

A literature review identified a number of areas that could be the source of these children’s difficulties. Interventions for these areas of difficulty were then explored in focus groups with expert speech and language therapists. The focus groups have helped to generate a model of interventions for children with receptive language impairments. The model indicates factors involved in the selection of targets for receptive language impairment, approaches to intervention, as well as factors that influence their delivery, including 'core components' to receptive language interventions.
The project has has identified evidence and theory for interventions in receptive language impairment. It is hoped that this work will help to inform the further development and evaluation of  interventions for children with receptive language impairment