Speech, Language, and Hearing
Before children learn to read, they learn the sounds of their language by listening and speaking. These skills provide the foundation for later literacy. A child with hearing impairment or articulation problems has trouble processing or expressing language, and is likely to have difficulty learning to read and write. In fact, speech problems are often the first sign of a learning disability.
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Speech and Language Developmental Milestones
The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders presents age-related guidelines that can help you determine if your child's speech and language skills are developing on schedule.
How Does Your Child Hear and Talk?
Every child is unique and has an individual rate of development. This chart represents, on average, the age by which most children will accomplish skills in hearing, understanding, and talking.
Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association offers these age-appropriate ways that parents can engage their young children to help develop speech and language abilities.
Anyone at any age can learn a second language after a first language is already established, but it takes a lot of practice. Second language acquisition often happens when a child who speaks a language other than English goes to school for the first time. This American Speech-Language-Hearing Association brief looks at the best way to teach a second language and how speech professionals can help.
Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development
The following parents tips from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association offer ideas for encouraging speech and language development among children from birth to six years old.
Effects of Hearing Loss on Development
It is well recognized that hearing is critical to speech and language development, communication, and learning. Children with listening difficulties due to hearing loss or auditory processing problems continue to be an underidentified and underserved population.
Helping Children With Communication Disorders in the Schools
The following are frequently asked questions on how to help children with communication disorders, particularly in regards to speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
What's 'Normal,' What's Not: Acquiring English as a Second Language
How can you tell when a student has a language-learning disability and when he or she is merely in the normal process of acquiring a second language?
Early Reading Assessment: A Guiding Tool for Instruction
How do you choose the best method for measuring reading progress? This brief article describes which assessments to use for different reading skills so that you can make sure all students are making progress towards becoming readers!
Hearing the difference between similar sounding words such as grow and glow is easy for most children, but not for all children.
These four short video clips give you the chance to watch and learn effective speech sound activities. The video clips are from Reading Rockets' PBS television series Launching Young Readers. 
Speech Sounds: Suggested Activities
Children must understand how speech sounds work to be ready for instruction in reading and writing. There are many activities that you can do with your students to help them increase their knowledge of speech sounds and their relationship to letters.
Early Identification of Speech-Language Delays and Disorders
If your child hasn't started speaking by age one and or you are concerned about their speech and language skills, there may be a concern. Early identification is key. They need to receive treatment before school begins so they won't miss out on essential pre-reading skills. Learn what the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has to say about early identification, evaluation, and speech-language treatments.
Young Children's Oral Language Development
The development of oral language is one of the child's most natural – and impressive – accomplishments.