The Verbal Interaction Of Swedish Language-Disordered Preschool-Children

Results are presented from an ongoing project on Swedish pre-school children with language disorders. The aim of the project is to develop clinically applicable methods for the analysis of grammatical and interactional abilities in children. The methods have been tested in a pilot study of ten dialogues between speech therapists and language disordered children. Results indicate that the grammatical analysis can pinpoint important aspects of development. The interactional analysis describes not only the child's but also the clinician's participation in the dialogue. This provides therapeutic indications as to how the clinician and other adults, e.g. parents and pre-school teachers, can develop their role as a conversational partner in order to promote the child's linguistic and interactional abilities.