Language disabled children depend heavily on word, phrase, or clause meanings. When working on sentence structures, word combinations, grammatical features, or other specific skills, choose words that are familiar to the student. Choose a picture which is the most common representation of a given word, referred to as best environment. Visual stimuli can be emphasized when presenting the printed word by color coding words to focus attention on particular cues. Go from general to specific in choosing vocabulary items.
Some words have more generalized meanings and can be used correctly in a variety of contexts.
For example, big can refer to overall size, height, width, volume, weight, or length, whereas tall refers to a more specific meaning, namely height. Choose big before tall, or large before wide. Complex words have a larger number of semantic features. For example, give and pay both refer to an act of transferring something from one to another, and therefore share that semantic aspect. But pay also includes an obligation to return something in exchange for what was given.