February 1998 Please retain this information for continual use. Very frequently however, oral language problems are not considered to be learning disabilities. This is unfortunate because oral language is the basis or foundation of much learning in school as well as out of school. Perceiving and learning speech sounds, understanding and using new vocabulary, understanding and learning to use grammar, and using language appropriately to communicate with others are critical to school success. Children with early speech articulation deficits very often have problems being able to hear individual sounds in words.
Hearing sounds in words is the best predictor of problems learning early reading skills.
Many of these children are later diagnosed as having learning disabilities. Many of these children learn to produce the sounds in words, but not to hear individual sounds in words or to move sounds around to change words They have difficulty recognizing and producing rhyming words, cannot identify words that begin or end with the same sound, and, cannot tell what sound a word begins and ends with. This interferes with learning phonics and consequently, early decoding skills. As young children they may have difficulty recognizing and producing rhyming words. Children having problems understanding language will have difficulty understanding directions, discussion, and social language as well as difficulty comprehending when reading.