Thoughts of a secondary school SLT

Tag: later language development

  • Language assessment at secondary school: challenges and solutions

    Assessment can be challenging at any age, but especially so at secondary school level and beyond. Compared to the early years, language growth during older childhood and adolescence is “gradual and protracted” (Nippold, 1998, p.3). It also becomes increasingly individualistic, as students choose their GCSE subjects, take up hobbies and learn new vocabulary related to their interests. This makes it harder to say what “normal” language development looks like, and to identify when there is a problem.

    Despite a growing body of research, there are still fewer assessments for this age group than there are for younger children. Marylin Nippold (1998), a leading expert in adolescent language development has argued extensively that many standardized language assessments designed for teenagers actually assess more basic, foundational skills, and fail to measure more advanced, age-appropriate skills.

    For example, these tests may assess basic sentence structures and core vocabulary, when these skills are typically mastered several years before. On the other hand, important aspects of adolescent language development such as figurative language, understanding and production of a range of advanced syntactic structures, as well as relevant discourse types, such as expository discourse, may not be covered.

    This is likely to lead to the identification of only the most severe and obvious language disorders, whilst more subtle difficulties are missed. In other words, it is quite possible for a student with a language disorder to attain an average score on a formal language assessment.

    You are likely to come across students with a wide range of difficulties at secondary school. Some will continue to display obvious oral language difficulties. But many will have “outgrown” these, only for difficulties with more complex written language or pragmatics to come to the fore. Though subtle, such difficulties still have a considerable impact on classroom learning and social functioning. Yet, they are likely to be missed if standardised assessments are relied on exclusively.

    Done well, assessment at secondary level also requires more from us, as Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs), in terms of our linguistic knowledge. Nippold (2023) points out that many of us are less familiar with the details of later language development, or what to expect at different ages. Yet, if we are to say with confidence which students have language disorders and which do not, then we will need a robust understanding of advanced syntax, including later-developing syntactic structures, such as passives, adverbial clauses and clefts.

    Finding solutions

    There is far too much to say about assessment to fit into one blog post. For more comprehensive accounts, please see Nelson (1998), Larson and McKinley (2003) or Paul and Norbury (2012). The latter very helpfully split language development into four distinct developmental stages: emerging language, developing language, language for learning and advanced language.

    Students with language disorders may well be at stages typically associated with younger children. In my experience, many of my Year 7 and 8 students have been at the “Language for Learning” level typically associated with the older years of primary school. Some of my older ones, and those with more subtle difficulties have been at the “Advanced Language” stage. Meanwhile, a few have had “Developing Language”, normally associated with children aged 2 to 5.

    The  authors provide detailed advice for assessing students at each stage across a whole range of areas, from the “literate” lexicon and figurative language, to comprehension and production of syntax, different types of discourse, pragmatics and the “metas”. Given this wealth of available  information, I just wanted to share a few ideas that I’ve found most useful in my everyday practice. I also try to keep in mind Larson and McKinley’s (2003, p.179) philosophy that assessment should be “descriptive/ explanatory, authentic, dynamic, student-centred, and multidimensional”.

    Despite the criticisms of standardised assessments already mentioned, they can still yield some useful information, and provide a helpful starting point. Importantly, they are often required for determining eligibility for funding and support. Comprehensive test batteries such as the CELF-5 (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals), also provide an efficient way of uncovering any glaring difficulties across a wide range of areas. Such difficulties can then be investigated further, and supplemented by informal assessment tasks.

    Student-focused assessment

    You are likely to be familiar with a number of informal assessment measures already used routinely with other client groups, such as client, parent and teacher interviews, as well as classroom observations. One tool I have found particularly useful is a self-assessment checklist sourced from Paul and Norbury (2012, p.541), which I use as the basis for a student interview.

    This assessment lists a number of skills relevant for accessing the secondary school curriculum in a table. It includes items such as “understanding teachers’ lectures”, “finding main ideas in textbooks”, “participating in class discussions”, “taking notes” and “finding time to finish my work”. Students are asked to rate themselves on these skills, ticking either, “I’m good”, “I’m ok”, “I get by”, “I need some help” or “Aah! Help! Help!” (Paul and Norbury, 2012, p.541).

    I have found this to be an invaluable tool for gaining an insight into my students’ understanding of their own difficulties. The checklist can then be compared with their teachers’ views, as well as any formal test scores. Any areas of difficulty can be explored further by getting students to give examples and tell stories of times when they struggled with those specific behaviours. This is often incredibly revealing.

    I have found that beginning the assessment with this checklist also helps to motivate my students, since its relevance to their daily lives is immediately clear. In terms of motivation, Scott and Balthazar (2013) also recommend explaining to your students what you are going to assess, as well as why and how, rather than simply administering the test without explanation.

    You might be surprised at what a difference this student-focused approach can make. I began doing this in earnest a few years ago. Rather than giving a generic explanation, I would refer back to their checklist, saying things like, “You told me that you need a lot of help with understanding your teacher’s lectures. Well, this test looks at your listening skills. It will help me to understand why you are finding your teacher’s lectures hard.”

    There was a noticeable difference in my students’ motivation when I did this: both during the assessment and beyond. I think they could see how the assessment was relevant to the very real difficulties they were experiencing, and why it was important they try their best.

    Dynamic Assessment

    Something else you are likely to be aware of but is still worth mentioning is dynamic assessment. Less a type of test than a philosophy, it is based on Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development: the gap between what a learner can accomplish on her own and what she can do with support.

    So whilst traditional assessments do not allow examiners to provide any support (as this would invalidate the standardised scores), dynamic assessment is an interactive process between learner and instructor, focusing on the learning process, rather than the product. The idea is to support learners to complete a given task by teaching strategies, providing modelling and scaffolding that enable them to achieve more than they could alone. A test-teach-retest structure may be used, or it can be less formal than this.

    Dynamic assessment allows us a deeper insight into our students’ learning processes than a traditional test does. It helps us to understand how our students may respond to intervention and the types of strategies that are likely to help them.

    It is very possible to use the approach alongside a formal assessment to gather qualitative information once standardised scores have been computed. When I worked for the NHS, we regularly used it alongside the CELF-5 to work out which strategies most helped particular students. These would then be compiled into lists to be passed onto the teaching staff supporting those students.

    It can also be useful for determining the exact nature of a student’s difficulties when a task relies on a wide range of skills. A poor score on the Understanding Spoken Paragraphs subtest of the CELF-5, for example, may indicate a difficulty with focusing, auditory memory, vocabulary, understanding of sentence structures or text cohesion devices, or higher level skills such as prediction and inferencing.

    Simply computing the student’s scores according to the test manual will give me limited insight into their unique difficulties. But if we read the paragraphs again together, if I probe difficult vocabulary, ask them to paraphrase complex sentences, and rephrase tricky sentences myself as well as asking them what they found difficult about it, then I will get a much better idea.

    Curriculum-Based Language Assessment (CBLA)

    Standardised assessments have also been critiqued for being “decontextualized” and disconnected from real-life language demands. They give us little information about how students process increasingly complex academic language, or how to plan intervention (Nippold, 2023).

    One potential solution to these problems is CBLA. Pioneered by Nikola Wolf Nelson in the 1980s and 90s, generic curriculum-based assessment (CBA) approaches are adapted to focus more specifically on language. So whilst CBA tasks are often constructed by teachers to test how well a student is learning the course content and whether there are any problems, CBLA assesses whether they have the language skills to do so.

    More specifically, CBLA aims to identify the language demands of the school curriculum by using content and materials drawn directly from it. At the same time, it seeks to understand how well a student is using their linguistic knowledge, skills and strategies to access that content (Nelson, 1998). Any mismatch can be used for determining a student’s intervention needs.

    CBLA may involve collecting several types of data, including artifact analysis, classroom observations and participant observations (Nelson, 1998). The former has sometimes been referred to as “portfolio analysis”, since it involves gathering together a “portfolio” of the student’s work.

    This might include lecture notes, classwork, completed projects and written assignments. Students’ work could be analysed for use of vocabulary, sentence structures and organisation, and compared to that of students who are not struggling. Written instructions could also be analysed for complex vocabulary and sentence structures. This “portfolio” of pieces can even be kept as a way of measuring progress later on.

    A lesser known version of a classroom observation is called a “participant observation”. Both involve observing the student. But whilst a classroom observation involves watching from afar, in participant observation, the assessor sits beside the student as they attempt a curriculum task. They act as “co-conspirator” (Nelson, 1998, p402) and attempt to work out the problem with the student.

    A kind of dynamic assessment, participant observation allows the instructor to see at close hand how the student attempts the task. What are the linguistic demands? Are there difficulties with any words or sentences? Is the student using any strategies? What other obstacles come up? Such an activity could easily take place in an isolated clinic room if embarrassment is a factor. You could even ask their teacher for the classwork they would miss by coming to your session, and complete it together.

    Language sampling

    Another difficulty involved in identifying expressive language disorders at secondary school level is that they tend to be more hidden. Even struggling students tend to make fewer overt grammatical errors as they get older (Nelson, 1998). Instead, they are likely to produce utterances that are shorter and simpler for their age, they may struggle with organising their thoughts and generating ideas (Nippold, 1998, Paul & Norbury, 2012).

    For this reason, many experts advocate carrying out language sampling. Marylin Nippold, for example, recommends taking both a conversational and an expository sample (Nippold, 2023), such as explaining a favourite game. This is because sentence length and complexity vary a lot depending on the context and discourse type (Nippold et al, 2005).

    These samples can then be transcribed, analysed and compared to norms. Sentence length and complexity can be assessed with measures such as the mean length of communication unit (MLCU) and clausal density (CD), which is the average number of clauses per sentence. The different types of sentences used could be noted, and attention paid to any lower frequency, later developing structures. Lexical development and diversity could be measured by looking at the number of different words (NDW). Finally, the proportion of maze words can give an idea of the level of dysfluency (Nippold, 2023, p.3).

    Marilyn Nippold (2023) acknowledges that language sampling may feel daunting to many SLTs who worry about the time it will take, and whether they have the linguistic knowledge to confidently analyse such samples. She recommends a computer program called SALT (Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts) for the purpose, since it automatically analyses speech samples once transcribed.

    I have also personally found that even taking a short written sample can be quite revealing of a student’s difficulties: their ability to plan, generate ideas and organise them into paragraphs, as well as the types of sentence structures and vocabulary they are using.

    Assessing comprehension

    Assessing comprehension is arguably even more challenging than assessing expressive language, since it is even more “hidden”. Whilst some standardised assessments do include tests of receptive syntax, these tend to be quite basic. They are unlikely to cover a wide range of later developing structures.

    One very useful way of assessing understanding of different types of sentence structures is with a grammaticality judgment task. This simple task involves giving students a list of sentences, and asking them whether they make grammatical sense or not. One of the benefits of assessing older students is that most will have developed the “meta-skills” to engage with a task like this.

    Paul and Norbury (2012) suggested showing students pictures of an “OK lady” and a “silly lady”, and proceeding to ask them to tell if the sentence was “OK” or “silly” by pointing to the corresponding picture. With this age group, I have found that simply asking students to put a tick by the sentences that make sense and a cross by the ones that don’t suffices.

    An alternative to this is to read/ show students a sentence, and then ask them a direct question about it. An example that tests understanding of relative clauses might be: “The journalist who interviewed the teacher ate his lunch. Who ate his lunch – the journalist or the teacher?”

    A student who answers “the teacher” may be relying on an immature comprehension strategy of assigning the verb to the nearest noun (“the teacher ate his lunch…”), and does not appear to have developed the ability to extract meaning from this syntactic structure alone. Grammaticality judgment tasks can be used to assess any number of sentence types or structures that you suspect may be a problem, such as passive sentences, nominal clauses or clefts.

    Another simple but very effective way of finding out how much a student is understanding of a text is to ask them to paraphrase, one sentence at a time. We could also ask to hear their thoughts using a “think aloud” approach. After the instructor has modelled their own thought processes as they attempt to understand a text, the student is encouraged to do so. This way, we are able to see exactly where any breakdowns in comprehension occur, and whether the student is employing any particular strategies.

    Other assessments

    One final point to add is that in recent years, a few really helpful assessments aimed at this age group have been published. For example, Language for Behaviour and Emotions (LFBE) is a comprehensive toolkit created by Anna Branagan, Melanie Cross and Stephen Parsons in 2020, using the principles of dynamic assessment to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses.

    Helpfully, it includes assessment of some later-developing, age-appropriate skills such as figurative language and higher order thinking skills which are not typically covered by standardised assessments, as we have seen. For example, knowledge of idioms, as well as vocabulary related to behaviour and emotions are tested. Higher order thinking skills including prediction, inference and ability to retell a story are also targeted in their scenario-based assessment and program.

    Final thoughts

    With all these things to keep in mind, assessment of secondary school students may feel daunting. But many experts now agree that assessment should be thought of as an ongoing process, rather than as something that must be “complete” before intervention can begin (Nelson, 1998, Larson and McKinley, 2003, Paul and Norbury, 2012, Scott and Balthazar, 2013). Thought of this way, we only need to gather enough information about a student’s difficulties to make a start and decide on priorities.

    This is what I now choose to do, although I have experienced both extremes in the past. Working at my first school with around 100 students on my caseload, I carried out brief “screenings”, using just three or four subtests from the CELF-4 as the basis for identifying their difficulties and setting targets. To be honest, this did not feel like enough information to go on.

    On the other hand, when I worked for the NHS, assessment was much more comprehensive, sometimes taking as long as three to four sessions. However, the goal was different: many of these students would not be seen for direct therapy, or they might only receive a few sessions with me. Instead, the aim was to gather enough information to pass on to the staff supporting them.

    At my current school, where I am fortunate enough to see students 1:1 or in small groups on an ongoing basis, my assessments usually take place over a couple of sessions. I begin by interviewing them about their difficulties and getting them to tell me their “stories”. I tend to carry out some core subtests from the CELF-5, and perhaps others based on the reasons they were referred. Using dynamic assessment alongside usually gives me a solid place to start. Alternatively, I might use the scenario-based assessment from the LFBE toolkit.

    As we continue working together and I find I need more information, I might speak to their teachers to see how things are going in class, carry out a grammaticality judgment task to assess their understanding of certain sentence structures, or use the “Crazy Phrases” test from the LBFE toolkit to assess their knowledge of idioms and non-literal language.

    Once more obvious oral language difficulties have been resolved, I might take a sample of written language, or ask to see some of their classwork or assignments, perhaps even attempting some tasks together in a participant observation. My practice is by no means perfect. But I hope that some of these ideas resonate, and that this snapshot into my daily practice gives a useful insight into assessment at secondary level.

    Notes

    Larson, V.L. and McKinley, N.L. (2003) Communication solutions for older students. Thinking Pub. 

    Loban, W. (1976) Language Development: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

    Nelson, N. W. (1998) Childhood Language Disorders in Context: Infancy Through Adolescence. 2nd edn. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

    Nippold, M.A. (1998) Later language development: The school-age and adolescent years. 2nd ed. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

    Nippold, M.A. (2023). Grammar guide for speech-language pathologists: Steps to analyzing complex syntax. San Diego: Plural Publishing.

    Nippold, Marilyn A., Linda J. Hesketh, Jill K. Duthie, and Tracy C. Mansfield. “Conversational Versus Expository Discourse: A Study of Syntactic Development in Children, Adolescents, and Adults.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 48, no. 5 (2005): 1048–1064. doi.org.

    Paul, R. and Norbury, C. (2012) Language Disorders from Infancy Through Adolescence: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Communicating. 4th edn. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

    Scott, Cheryl M., and Catherine H. Balthazar. 2013. “The Role of Complex Sentence Knowledge in Children with Reading and Writing Difficulties.” Perspectives on Language and Literacy 39 (3): 18–30. [1, 2]

  • Difficulties with text cohesion: Why some students struggle to understand connected text

    Some time ago I was asked to assess a new student who was having trouble at school. He misbehaved in all his lessons and was rude to his teachers, meaning that he spent most of his time in detention. Fortunately, staff members wondered if he might have some undiagnosed difficulties that were causing him to act in this way, so he was referred for a Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) assessment with me.

    Contrary to the reports I had heard, he was kind and polite one to one, even wishing me a good day at the end of the assessment. But the interview was illuminating. When we talked about how school was going, he told me that he understood “nothing” in his lessons, so there was “no point” in behaving.

    I suspected a language disorder, so used the CELF-5 (Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals) standardized assessment to find out more. As expected, he had mild difficulties across a range of areas such as vocabulary and ability to follow instructions. But most concerning was his performance on the Understanding Spoken Paragraphs subtest, when he answered only one question correctly.

    The task involves the assessor reading several short paragraphs aloud before asking students questions about them. I like to use it because I think it reflects quite well how much a child may understand in class, but the skills it assesses are quite broad. A low score might indicate difficulties in a number of areas such as with paying attention, auditory memory, vocabulary knowledge, understanding of sentence structures as well as ability to predict and infer.

    As I tried to delve deeper, we read the paragraphs again and I asked my student to paraphrase some of the sentences. To my surprise, his sentence level understanding was not bad. Yet he still struggled to say what the paragraph was about, and to answer the text-level questions. What he appeared to be struggling with was understanding how the sentences hung together as a whole, to form a “text”.

    As Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs), we are used to supporting our students with some aspects of text level discourse. It is common to work on inference, understanding of different levels of questioning, as well as teaching a range of general reading comprehension strategies such as summarizing, finding the main idea, and perhaps visualizing.

    One area that is not so well researched, perhaps even neglected in our field despite being closely linked with comprehension abilities is that of text cohesion. Simply put, this is the “glue” that connects sentences together and distinguishes a unified text from a series of unrelated sentences.

    The concept was first introduced and formalized in the seminal work of Halliday and Hasan (1976). According to the authors, for a passage of information to be regarded as a text, certain features must be present. We are talking not just about the organizational macrostructures that characterize different genres (although these do add to the “texture”), but the “cohesive ties” that connect individual sentences to each other grammatically or semantically (Halliday and Hasan, 1976).

    Simply put, cohesion occurs when one element of a passage can only be understood in reference to another. In the text, “A man in a blue anorak wandered over Tower Bridge. He stopped to admire the view”, the word “he” can only be understood by referring back to “a man in a blue anorak” in the previous sentence. Cohesion may go in either direction: when you have to refer backwards, as in the previous example, it is called anaphora. This is by far the most common type of cohesive tie. (Halliday and Hasan, 1976).

    It is also possible to refer forwards, e.g. “When he got home, John went straight to bed” and “I couldn’t believe she did it: Sarah won the marathon”. In both examples, pronouns are used early on to refer forward to information that comes later. So in the second example, “it” refers forward to “the winning of the marathon”. This is called cataphora. Interestingly, this is the primary function of a colon: as a kind of visual arrow pointing forwards (Halliday and Hasan, 1976).

    Halliday and Hasan (1976) classified cohesive devices into 5 categories: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. According to them, the first three are grammatical in nature, whilst the last is semantic, with conjunction being a combination of the two. However, they were quick to note that there is no sharp dividing line between categories and some examples may be on the borderline (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). Other researchers have organized them in different ways.

    Reference involves replacing a specific entity in the text with another, as in the man in the blue anorak example. Common reference items include the personal pronouns, “he”, “she”, “they”, “it”, etc, as well as the demonstratives “this” and “that”. The definite article “the” also plays a role, so named because it denotes something definite, or specific.

    In the text, “A stray cat appeared on my doorstep this morning. The cat looked hungry, so I gave it some food”, we understand that the cat being mentioned in the second sentence is the same as in the first, since “the” is frequently used to link back to a noun that has already been introduced. Reference mainly involves replacing nouns, though this could be people, animals, places (e.g. there) or objects. In extended reference, whole paragraphs may even be replaced, e.g. “considering all this”.

    In substitution, a word or phrase is also replaced with a filler word, but something is added that contrasts with the original idea (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). For example, in the text, “My pen has run out of ink. I need to buy a new one”, “one” substitutes for “pen”. But we are not talking about the exact same pen; we want a new pen. Substitution may be nominal, verbal, or even clausal. Common examples include “one”, “any”, “same”, “do  so”, “not”, etc, “Is James coming to the party? I hope so”.

    Ellipsis is similar to substitution, but redundant information is removed instead of being replaced. Halliday and Hasan (1976) called it “substitution by zero”.  So in the text, “There were ten laptops available in the shop yesterday. Now there are only three”, we can only understand what “three” is referring to by looking back to “laptops” in the previous sentence.

    Conjunctions and adverbial conjuncts can also be used as cohesive devices, since they link different propositions together across sentences and make the relationships between them explicit. These relationships may be additive, adversative, causal, temporal, explanatory, or other, e.g. “furthermore”, “despite”, “anyway”, etc.

    Finally, sentences may be linked together using vocabulary in lexical cohesion, which can be further subdivided into reiteration and collocation. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), nominal reiteration is very similar to pronominal reference, grammatically speaking, since the original noun is replaced by something else.

    However, instead of a personal pronoun being used, this “something else” may take the form of a synonym, superordinate, subordinate or general noun (or simply the same word repeated). For example, in the text: “The neighbour’s tiny puppy was left outside in the freezing rain all night. The poor thing was shivering uncontrollably when we found it”, “the poor thing” refers back to the puppy.

    As well as acting as a cohesive device it allows writers to share more information or a personal feeling about their subject, whilst avoiding repetition. It is a tool relied on heavily by journalists in newspaper articles. This is also one of the examples that falls on the borderline between categories according to Halliday and Hasan (1976), having both a syntactic and semantic element.

    With collocation, the linkages between sentences are of a more general nature. Here, we are not focusing on a particular referent. Instead, the presence of related words found throughout the passage tie it together. The more likely the words are to be encountered in the same context, the more cohesive the passage will be. So the words “surgeon”, “craniotomy”, “procedure” and “incision” will give a certain type of “texture”.

    Some types of anaphor are easier to understand than others. A simple cohesive tie connects one sentence with the preceding, and is probably the easiest to understand. More remote ties that span several sentences will be more difficult because they tax working memory capacity (Irwin, 1986). Equally, nominal reference is thought to be easier than verbal reference to understand, whilst replacement of whole clauses and paragraphs of information is thought to be the hardest.

    In her work on later language development, Marilyn Nippold (1998) observed how understanding and use of a range of cohesive devices continues to develop throughout the school-age and adolescent years. But according to Nelson (1998), this is something that many with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) struggle with. Indeed, young children with DLD are known for having difficulty with pronominal reference, and inconsistency with this is something I have noticed even at secondary school age.

    However, an even greater concern has been some of my students’ difficulties with lexical reiteration. A student with these types of difficulties might easily imagine several different characters in a text where only one is being referred to by different nouns. If a text contains the sentences, “The doctor walked into the emergency room. The surgeon grabbed the scalpel. The specialist began to work”, a struggling student might imagine three different characters. Such a difficulty will clearly have a profound impact on text level comprehension.

    To sum up, despite production and comprehension of text cohesion devices being a common area of difficulty for students with DLD, there is currently little information about this in our field compared to others such as education and linguistics. Although the student I mentioned earlier also had broader inferencing difficulties, poor understanding of text cohesion devices, especially lexical reiteration, was a notable problem for him. In future posts I hope to share some practical ways to help students navigate these difficulties.

    Notes

    Halliday, M. A. K., and Ruqaiya Hasan. Cohesion in English. London: Longman, 1976.

    Irwin, Judith Westphal. Understanding and Teaching Cohesion Comprehension. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 1986

    Nelson, N. W. (1998) Childhood Language Disorders in Context: Infancy Through Adolescence. 2nd edn. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

    Nippold, M.A. (1998) Later language development: The school-age and adolescent years. 2nd ed. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

  • What makes sentences complicated?

    Preadolescents and adolescents with language disorders struggle to understand the types of sentences they are exposed to at secondary school. Academic language, or informational language is characterized by long, complex sentences and technical vocabulary, used to express higher level ideas (for more information about this type of language, see my blog post: https://secondaryschoolslt.wordpress.com/2026/04/15/what-is-expository-discourse-and-how-is-it-relevant-at-secondary-school/).

    Many students with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have restricted vocabularies which impede their understanding of this type of language. They are also likely to have weaker, or nonexistent knowledge of certain grammatical structures that cause no problems for their peers, such as passives and object relative clauses (Scott, 2009, Montgomery et al, 2021).

    However, not even their typically developing peers can be expected to understand all of the sentences they come across at this age, since not all adults achieve complete mastery of certain sentence structures. For example, in one study, Nippold et al (2020) found that only 25% of the supposedly typical young adults in their sample were able to produce past tense counterfactual (PTCF) sentences perfectly, and only 50% were able to understand them all the time.

    Aspects other than linguistic knowledge also affect our understanding of such sentences. For example, Leonard et al (2007) found that 62% of the variance in children’s composite language scores was down to nonlinguistic factors, such as Verbal Working Memory (VWM) and processing speed.

    According to Balthazar and Scott (2023, p.567), “syntactic complexity carries a processing cost for all speakers across all modalities”. You might imagine that written language would be less affected by factors such as VWM than oral language which must be interpreted in the moment. However, this has not been found to be the case, probably because the reader still has to use their inner voice to “re-auditorise” the sentence and move parts around.

    Researchers such as Scott, Balthazar and Nippold have spoken in detail about exactly what makes sentences more complex and harder to process. Scott (2009) highlights factors such as the number propositions and embeddings, the sentence order as well as the distance between the main elements. In a later article, Balthazar and Scott (2023, p. 565) defined sentence complexity as “any structure that adds to, interrupts, or changes the subject–verb–object (SVO) order within a clause or adds clauses within a sentence and can be reasonably predicted to increase the processing “load” of the sentence”.

    Firstly, then, a long sentence made up of multiple clauses is harder to process than a simple sentence made up of just one main clause. By definition, a sentence becomes “compound” or “complex” when coordinated or subordinate clauses are added. Syntactic complexity is not just about the length of the sentence, but also the “clausal density” or “subordination index”; in other words, the average number of clauses per sentence.

    Similarly, it is not just about the number of clauses, but how they are arranged. Academic text tends to feature “different levels of subordination” to express a hierarchy of ideas. Conjunctions such as “unless”, “despite” and “otherwise” are used to give weight to certain ideas over others and are capable of expressing subtle relationships between different parts of a sentence.

    This contrasts with oral, conversational language where conjoined clauses of equal value connected with simple conjunctions such as “and”, “but” and “so” are more common (see my post: https://secondaryschoolslt.wordpress.com/2026/04/06/how-are-oral-and-written-language-different/  for more about the differences between oral and written language).

    A particularly complex form of subordination is called “embedding”, where one clause is placed within another, and acts as a noun or adjective in that sentence. Central embedding is considered particularly difficult to understand, and “nesting”, where one clause is placed within another within another even more so. When this exceeds three levels, the sentence quickly becomes unintelligible, e.g. “the dog the cat the mouse bit chased barked”.

    Syntactic complexity can also be increased through elaboration of noun and verb phrases. In one study, Leonard et al (2013) found that when adjectives were added to different nouns, e.g. “the happy yellow dog washes the little pig”, children with language disorders quickly became confused about who was the agent and who was the patient (Leonard et al, 2013, p. 12).

    Cheryl Scott (2009, p. 186) also compares the simple sentence “the amendment was a disaster” with the more complex sentence, “the thoroughly rewritten and meaningless amendment that was inserted by the aide was a disaster.”  Whilst both sentences contain the same subject, amendment, the second has been expanded through the use of modifiers which come before the noun, “pre-modifying” it, as well as a relative clause which comes afterwards, “post-modifying” it.

    Sentences such as this, where a large amount of information precedes the main verb, can also be referred to as “left-branching”. According to Marilyn Nippold (2023, p.44), the entire noun phrase must be held in working memory until the reader/ listener reaches the main action, “was a disaster” and finds out what the sentence is about, increasing processing demands. Other structures which may feature in left branching sentences include adverbial clauses, prepositional phrases and appositives.

    English is also a language with a strict subject-verb-object (SVO) order, and anything which disrupts this is thought to make sentences harder to understand. As mentioned, pre- and post-modification of the noun phrase can do this by creating gaps (long distance dependencies) between elements which are typically close together. However, any sentence which is not in canonical (typical) order, such as passives and clefts (Scott and Balthazar, 2013) may cause difficulties, since certain elements need to be moved around in the mind.

    One further point is that students with DLD may also be overly reliant on immature comprehension strategies such as order-of-mention and context cues. Referring back to the last example sentence, a student with a language disorder may mistakenly connect the predicate “was a disaster” with the immediately preceding noun, “aide”, leading them to the conclusion that the aide was the disaster rather than the amendment. This mistake of believing the nearest noun to be the subject of the sentence is not uncommon (Scott, 2009, Scott and Balthazar, 2013).

    Finally, studies have shown that sentence complexity impacts working memory performance differently across different languages. In English, syntactic complexity had the greater impact, whilst in Hungarian, it was the increased morphological complexity of words (Kail and Csépe, 2006). This is likely due to the distinguishing features of the different languages.

    To sum up, some sentences are so complex that they challenge the processing limits of any listener or reader. As students progress through secondary school and beyond, they are increasingly exposed to this type of academic language. Knowing exactly what can make sentences hard to understand, for all of us, not just those with language disorders will make it easier for us to support our students.

    Notes

    Balthazar, Catherine H., and Cheryl M. Scott. “Sentences Are Key.” American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 33, no. 2 (2023): 564–579.

    Kail, Michèle, Valéria Csépe, F. L. C. C. 2006. “Effects of Sentence Length and Complexity on Working Memory Performance in Hungarian Children with Specific Language Impairment: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison.” [International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders] 41, no. 6: 713-731.

    Leonard, Laurence B., Patricia Deevy, James W. Miller, Chrystal Rameela, Robert Schwartz, and J. Bruce Tomblin. “Speed of Processing, Working Memory, and Language Impairment in Children.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50, no. 2 (April 2007): 408–428. 

    Leonard, Laurence B., Patricia Deevy, Marc E. Fey, and Shelley L. Bredin-Oja. “Sentence Comprehension in Specific Language Impairment: A Task Designed to Distinguish between Cognitive Capacity and Syntactic Complexity.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 56, no. 3 (June 2013): 937–949.

    Montgomery, James W., Ronald B. Gillam, and Julia L. Evans. “A New Memory Perspective on the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of School-Age Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Implications for Theory, Assessment, and Intervention.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 52, no. 2 (April 2021): 449–466.

    Nippold, Marilyn A., Abigail Nehls-Lowe, and Daemion Lee. “Development of Past Tense Counterfactual Sentences: Examining Production and Comprehension in Adolescents and Adults.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 63, no. 10 (October 2020): 3474–3484.

    Nippold, M.A. (2023). Grammar guide for speech-language pathologists: Steps to analyzing complex syntax. San Diego: Plural Publishing.

    Scott, Cheryl M. “A Case for the Sentence in Reading Comprehension.” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 40, no. 2 (2009): 184-191.

     Scott, Cheryl M., and Catherine H. Balthazar. “The Grammar of Information: Challenges for Older Students With Language Impairments.” Topics in Language Disorders 30, no. 4 (2010): 288–307.

    Scott, Cheryl M., and Catherine Balthazar. “The Role of Complex Sentence Knowledge in Children with Reading and Writing Difficulties.” Perspectives on Language and Literacy 39, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 18–3

  • Later language development: what Speech and Language Therapists need to know about the secondary school years

    Until relatively recently, the topic of later language development had been somewhat neglected. Whilst early childhood is seen as a time of rapid linguistic growth, later language development has been described as “gradual and protracted” (Nippold, 1998, p.3). Still, recent research has elucidated the many important advancements that occur during this period, calling into question the myth that language development is complete by school age.

    What’s normal?

    Whilst the early period is still considered the time of primary language acquisition, there is now a consensus that language development continues into adulthood and has no fixed end point. In the case of vocabulary, for example, even older adults may learn new words as they pursue different hobbies and read widely. On the other hand, some adults never master all grammatical structures, especially if they did not continue on to further education, where more scholarly forms are in more common usage (Nippold, 1998).

    Wide variation is thus characteristic of language development in the later years. As students begin secondary school, choose certain subjects, drop others, and take on extra-curricular activities, they also develop increasingly specialised vocabularies to match their interests: language becomes ever more individual to the student (Nippold, 1998). What’s more, with slang terms, hesitations, and non-specific phrases such as “like” and “stuff” increasingly common in adolescent language, even typical development may appear disordered (Larson and McKinley, 2003). Nippold (1998) points out that even well-educated adults make grammatical errors from time to time.

    These factors make it more difficult to set guidelines and to define what is “normal” during the adolescent years. And because change is slow and gradual, we may need to compare students across very different age groups to see the differences (Nippold, 1998, p.3).

    Walter Loban (1976) was the first person to document language growth into early adulthood through a longitudinal study comparing a low language ability group with a high language ability group. Since then, various other experts in the field have written about the topic, and a body of research now exists in the area. I have drawn mainly on the amazing work of Marylin Nippold in writing this blog post, particularly her book, “Later language development” (Nippold, 1998).

    Vocabulary

    One important development that occurs during the later years is the expansion of vocabulary. Whilst a 6 year old knows roughly 18,000 words, this increases to at least 60,000 in early adulthood (Nippold, 2024). As students progress through school and participate in the “literate” activities of reading, writing, academic discussion and accessing the curriculum, they begin to acquire more technical and specialist vocabulary, as well as concepts such as adverbs of magnitude and likelihood, and metacognitive and metalinguistic verbs (Nippold, 1998).

    Learning a word is also a gradual, rather than an all or nothing process (Nippold, 1998), and many qualitative improvements occur over time. As we encounter words in different contexts, semantic representations strengthen, and new meanings are added to words already in the repertoire: whilst a young child will typically know the physical meaning of a “double function” word such as “cold”, it is only later that she will learn its psychological meaning, and understand how these different meanings overlap (Nippold, 1998, p.15). Slowly, an organised semantic network develops, as connections between similar words are strengthened (Nippold, 1998).

    The way that we learn words also changes. When we are young, we learn words incidentally, through oral input, but when we begin secondary school, a lot of curriculum vocabulary is taught directly in class. Another important source of learning at this age is the written word, as students are exposed to more unusual, abstract and complex vocabulary and structures through their independent reading. Many young readers learn to utilise morphological and contextual clues to figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words they encounter, supported by developing metacognitive skills and a greater awareness of derivational morphology (Nippold, 1998).

    Syntax

    Syntax also develops in various, subtle ways. Considerable growth occurs at both the intrasentential1 and the intersentential2 levels. Individual sentences increase in length, complexity, and density of information (Nippold, 1998). Loban (1976) observed small, but regular increases in sentence length throughout the school years, although Nippold (1998) cautions us that the length of utterance depends very much on the context. All speakers tend to use shorter sentences when communicating in informal, conversational contexts, and longer sentences in more formal contexts, or when required to explain and give detailed information, such as when telling the rules of a game (Nippold, 1998, 2014).

    Clausal density is another sign of mature development. Whilst a 5 year old may be able to form grammatically correct sentences containing a range of subordinate clauses, the ability to construct longer sentences containing multiple, embedded subordinate clauses to express increasingly complex and abstract thoughts continues to develop into adulthood (Nippold, Mansfield, Billow and Tomblin, 2009). Improved understanding and use of a range of subordinating, coordinating and correlative conjunctions goes alongside this (Nippold, 1998).

    Certain types of clause, such as nominal, adverbial and relative clauses are also used increasingly (Nippold, 2024); the latter, in particular are a common sign of maturing language (Loban, 1976). For a detailed look at these, and other aspects of advanced grammar, I highly recommended Nippold’s book: “A grammar guide for Speech-Language Pathologists” (Nippold, 2014).

    Still, a long, clunky sentence is not necessarily a sign of mature language skills when the message could be expressed more succinctly. Loban (1976) found that during the later stages of adolescence, his low language ability group unexpectedly appeared to catch up with his high language group at one point, in terms of the average number of dependent clauses used per communication unit. However, upon deeper analysis, he found that the higher language group were using more sophisticated sentence structures which enabled them to be more concise.

    Rather than continuing to add on further clauses, sentences may be expanded in other ways, such as elaboration of noun and verb phrases through the use of appositives, infinitives, gerunds, prepositional phrases, and others. Indeed, the presence and combination of low-frequency syntactic structures such as these is another characteristic of mature language (Nippold, 1998). Students also learn to link different sentences together using adverbial conjuncts and other devices to produce cohesive discourse (Nippold, 1998).

    Discourse & comprehension

    Narratives are the most dominant type of discourse throughout primary school, and young children already know a lot about storytelling. At secondary school, students learn to construct longer, more detailed and organised narratives containing multiple episodes, whilst giving more space for their characters’ feelings and motivations. At the same time, other types of discourse, such as expository discourse3, persuasion and negotiation come to the fore (Nippold, 1998).

    Comprehension also improves slowly, and older children develop the important ability to process larger units of discourse (Nelson, 1998). Still, Larson and McKinley (2003) caution that we should not expect pre-adolescents and adolescents to understand everything we say to them, since some grammatical structures may not even be understood by adults. Anyone who has read complex academic prose can tell you that some sentences are just harder to understand than others.

    Figurative language & pragmatics

    Abstract thought, and with it figurative language such as similes, metaphors, idioms and proverbs also develops over time. Research has found that preschoolers have some awareness of this type of language, but that deeper understanding emerges during the school years and adolescence. Similarly, jokes, slang and ambiguous language become increasingly important, since they are linked to students’ self-esteem and peer-acceptance (Nippold, 1998). Conversational and pragmatic skills also develop, with older students more able to adapt their communication to different contexts (Nippold, 2024).

    Whilst many linguistic achievements appear to be “built in”, we have seen how school itself, and the contexts in which students find themselves can influence language development. Similarly, the increasing demands of formal education, which typically include reading challenging material, and extended written assignments sometimes requiring independent research may push forward cognitive and linguistic growth (Paul and Norbury, 2012, Nippold, 2024). As Nippold says, “complex thought encourages complex talk” (Nippold, 2014).

    Final thoughts

    Despite the amount of research now available, later language development is still widely ignored. Larson and McKinley (2003) found that very few university programs across the USA offered modules on this topic, and my experience at a UK university in 2012 was similar. In a small survey that I carried out last year, around half of my fellow SLTs did not feel they had the knowledge to work with this age group, with a further 25% feeling unsure, suggesting that perhaps not much has changed. I hope this summary has helped; for a more in-depth look at later language development and a deeper understanding of grammar, I highly recommend Marilyn Nippold’s excellent books (Nippold, 1998, 2023).

    To find out more about what a language disorders might look like in the later years, please see my post: https://secondaryschoolslt.wordpress.com/2026/01/07/what-is-developmental-language-disorder-dld/

    Notes

    Larson, V.L. and McKinley, N.L. (2003) Communication solutions for older students. Thinking Pub. 

    Loban, W. (1976) Language Development: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

    Nelson, N. W. (1998) Childhood Language Disorders in Context: Infancy Through Adolescence. 2nd edn. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

    Nippold, M.A. (1998) Later language development: The school-age and adolescent years. 2nd ed. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.

    Nippold, M. A., Mansfield, T. C., Billow, J. L. and Tomblin, J. B. (2009) ‘Syntactic development in adolescents with a history of language impairments: a follow-up investigation’, American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18(3), pp. 241–251. 

    Nippold, Marilyn. (2014). Language Intervention at the Middle School: Complex Talk Reflects Complex Thought. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. 45. 153-156. 10.1044/2014_LSHSS-14-0027.

    Nippold, M.A. (2023). Grammar guide for speech-language pathologists: Steps to analyzing complex syntax. San Diego: Plural Publishing.

    Nippold, Marilyn. (2024). Language Development in School-Age Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults. 10.1016/B978-0-323-95504-1.00374-4.

    Paul, R. and Norbury, C. (2012) Language Disorders from Infancy Through Adolescence: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Communicating. 4th edn. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

    1. Within sentences ↩︎
    2. Between sentences ↩︎
    3. Discourse aiming to explain or inform; this is the language of the classroom, of lectures, textbooks, reports, etc.  ↩︎

  • In at the deep end

    I began my Speech and Language Therapy journey sobbing in the Additional Learning Needs room in the autumn term of 2014. It was the beginning of the academic year and I’d just gotten my first job as a Newly Qualified Practitioner (NQP) at an “academy” in a deprived borough of London. Unusually for a mainstream secondary school, they’d hired a private Speech and Language Therapist – me! – to manage their huge caseload of around 100 students with language and communication needs. And I didn’t seem to be handling it all that well…

    “I get on well with teenagers”, I’d said during the interview, “and since everyone’s so focused on early intervention, I think they can get forgotten about. But I feel they deserve to be supported too…” That’s how I found myself leading (in the loosest sense of the word) seven Speech and Language Therapy sessions a day – for groups of disengaged young people who seemed keener on throwing the bean bag I’d brought as a “talking stick” at each other’s heads than in doing any of the activities I’d carefully planned.

    It didn’t help that I’d never worked in a secondary school before, let alone had a placement in one. Or that my postgraduate course back in 2012 had covered early language development, before moving swiftly onto acquired adult conditions, all but skipping the adolescent period. Although research into this age group is slowly building, it’s still only a fraction of what’s available for early years. You could be forgiven for thinking that language development ends at 5, and there’s nothing left to be done…

    On the contrary, as student after student came through my door for their assessments, a staggering level of need emerged that I’d never have expected to find in this ordinary secondary school. Many were struggling with basic sentence structures and vocabulary, yet they were expected to analyse Shakespearean tragedies and compose essays. The gap between where my students were and where they were expected to be seemed insurmountable – was it really my job to help them cross it?

    Meanwhile, as the only SLT at school, I had to wait for my weekly supervision session at the clinic for a sighting of one of my colleagues. This made for a slightly strange and isolating first year. And without anyone to ask advice on a daily basis, my students became a mirror for how I was doing. The reflection wasn’t always flattering. They’d often “act out” or refuse to come to my sessions. This was tough, but looking back, it was some of the clearest and most honest feedback I ever received.

    I only ended up staying at that first school for a year, but I did stick with the age group. Over the next decade I went on to work at a range of mainstream secondaries around London, mainly privately, but also as a locum for the NHS.

    Slowly, things started to get better, and I began to see my own progress reflected in my students. Their annual CELF-5 scores improved. They’d tell me that they were understanding more in class; that they were finding it easier to follow their teachers’ instructions. A memory strategy helped one remember his mum’s PIN so he could help her with the shopping (so he said!). Another would proudly show me his conduct card at the beginning of every session with admittedly fewer infractions than the previous term.

    But most of all, my students began showing up more – physically and mentally – to my sessions. And overwhelmingly they did so without complaining; it was almost as if they thought it was helping!

    I’m not a researcher or academic – just an ordinary SLT who’s been in the extra-ordinary position of having time, week in, week out, to try out a range of interventions with my students to see what worked. It’s taken a lot of trial and error, digging out random books and taking obscure courses to get to a point where I feel like I’m truly serving my students’ needs.

    My practice is by no means perfect, but I wanted to start this blog to pass on what I’ve learnt, and to share a window into my practice for anyone who’s interested. Whether you’re a student, SLT or another professional interested in finding out more, I hope this helps.

    Tawna

    You might like to start here: https://secondaryschoolslt.wordpress.com/2026/01/07/what-is-developmental-language-disorder-dld/