The purpose of this study was to investigate how the special education, for children with Language impairment in preschool, was organised in a municipality in Sweden. The study was based on interviews and field studies as the primary research tools in qualitative and ethnographic method. The result showed that special education teachers were localised in different geographic areas of school and that there were preschools that lacked special educational expertise in Language impairment. Literature and the importance of playing for language development were emphasised as well as the use of signs and visual aids as augmentative and alternative communication. In the preschool for children with Language impairment, the teachers carried their knowledge into practical and pedagogical work.

The purpose of this study is to generate knowledge about how teachers relate to students with Language impairment in learning situations, with particular focus on working memory. The questions are: What kind of knowledge do teachers have regarding Language impairment and working memory?, What experience do teachers have regarding lack of working memory abilities among students with Language impairment and which consequences do the teachers believe such defects may have for the students? and How can teachers create a learning environment that reduces the working memory demand for students with Language impairment? A review of the field shows that there are gaps to fill regarding students with Language impairment and working memory. Language impairment has so far been neglected by researchers and within the public debate. How working memory capacity affects the students has only recently begun to receive attention in school and research.

Speech intervention for children with Language impairment aims to both strengthen specific language skills and to reinforce the ability to participate in interactional contexts. Children with Language impairment often have problems in interaction; therefore the contributions of the conversational partner are of great importance. Thus, the demands are high on the speech and language pathologist (SLP) for sense and cohesion in intervention. The aim of the present study was to examine how SLPs and children with Language impairment interact in language intervention. An approach influenced by Conversation Analysis was used in order to identify various phenomena that occurred, and their effect on the structure of the interaction was analyzed.Four SLPs, two men and two women, were enrolled in the study.  They participated in intervention with two children with Language impairment each, i.e.

7 % of children in preschool have some sort of language disorder. How should preschool teachers best help these children? In a small special group where they can focus on the child´s individual linguistic development or in an ordinary group were the other children can be linguistic models for the child and help his or hers development?The purpose of this paper is to see what preschool teachers, who work with children who has Language impairment, says about working with these children in a special group as compared with working with them in an ordinary group together with children without Language impairment. What are the advantages and the disadvantages related to the different ways of working? Another focus point is how the children collaborate with each other.

Language impairment affects the ability to communicate. Children with languageimpairment have difficulties in using language in interaction to various degrees, and the contributions of the conversational partner are of great importance. The use of languagein interaction can be analysed by means of conversation analysis. The purpose of thepresent study was to study interaction of a group of pre-school children with Language impairment with four different conversational partners. These were a peer with languag eimpairment, a peer with typical language development, a pre-school teacher and a parent.

By studying recent literature and following current research we know that language awareness and a rich language is important to all children when learning reading and writing and that decoding and understanding of the words are the fundamental processes in reading. How do pupils with visual impairment learn how to read and write? What strategies do they use in their contacts with reading and writing? What are the advantages do pupils with visual impairment have when learning to read and write? These questions have been the starting points in a study we have done by following two pupils with visual impairment. By meeting and discussing with the children, their parents, teachers, and lowvisiontherapists we have got a deeper knowledge in how these children meet the language in reading and writing. We have also come to an understanding regarding people surrounding the children have to make reading and writing comprehensive, enjoying, and meaningful.The problem for a child with visual impairment is the decoding, to catch letters and pictures of words good enough with the sight.

The aim of this study was to examine language abilities and their correlation to reading comprehension in 12 year old children with mild tomoderate sensorineural hearing impairment. Eight children with mild to moderate hearing impairment were tested in listening comprehension, grammatical comprehension, receptive vocabulary, phonological short termmemory, word finding, semantic relations, reading comprehension, comprehension of written words and decoding of words and non-words. The results were compared to results from a comparison group. The children with hearing impairment had significantly lower results in phonological short term memory and decoding. No significant difference was found between groups in reading comprehension.

One of the largest work areas for speech and language pathologists is intervention for children with speech and language disorders. The purpose of the present study was to describe and analyze the clinical management of Language impairment in children by studying and comparing medical records and literature from the years 2000 and 2009. The present study is a sequel to two previously published papers by Christina Samuelsson (1997; 1999), in which medical records and literature from the 1920-, 60- and 70?s were studied and a paper by Helén Sämfors (2001), in which the years 1985 and 1995 were studied. The medical records used in the present study came from a medical ward for speech and language pathology at a university hospital in Sweden. The results showed that significantly more children were referred to the clinic for speech and language problems in 2009 than in 2000, and more children were treated for their impairments.

The society today is more aware of the importance of early diagnosis of children?s hearing impairment. Neonatal hearing screening is used in many countries today, that is to be able to start habilitation at as early age as possible. Studies have shown that if children are diagnosed early enough will their language ability follow the age group of normal hearing peers.This is a journal study where journals form 99 Icelandic children, diagnosed in the Hearing and Speech Institute of Iceland during a period of 5 years, between 2002 and 2006, were inspected and analyzed. At the same time as the age of diagnose was analyzed the influence of gender, type and degree of hearing impairment was inspected.The age of diagnose of hearing impairment in Iceland was found to be between 5 and 6 years of age which looks higher than in other counties.

The purpose of the present pilot study was to evaluate the parentalintervention ComAlong at the Division of Child Language, for parents ofchildren with severe Language impairment. ComAlong is one of the parentalinterventions developed in the AKKTIV project. AKKTIV stands foraugmentative and alternative communication ?early intervention. Thepresent study consists of a case study, a compilation of course evaluationsand an interview with the two leaders of the course.

Sweden has a growing proportion of children living in a multilingual environment. It is thus highly important that caretakers as well as professionals who meet these children have knowledge of multilingualism and its impact on language development. Also, an increase of referrals of multilingual children with suspected Language impairment to speech and language pathology clinics is seen.The objective of this study was to investigate the linguistic ability in both Swedish and Arabic in a four year old child with suspected Language impairment. A further aim was to implement an intensive intervention and evaluate the efficacy of it. Language testing in both languages showed that the boy?s greatest need was in the lexical domain.

This paper explores the interaction of children with Language impairment (LI). The present essay is a conversation analytic study of child-child and child-therapist dyads. The aim was to explore in what ways children with LI reach common understanding. Another purpose was to investigate if there are differences in interaction between dyads with children with LI and dyads with children with LI and speech language therapist. Seven children, three girls and four boys, with LI participated in the study.

Different abilities are of importance to pragmatics, there among hearing. Hearing impairment can affect language development and also pragmatic ability. The aim of the present paper was to study the pragmatic ability in terms of request for clarification in children with Hearing Impairment (HI) in conversation with children with no known hearing impairment, henceforth normally hearing (NH). The present study also describes requests for clarification sequentially in detail, and also highlights points where there may be observable differences between children with and without hearing impairment. Eight conversational pairs consisting of one child with HI and one NH child were studied.

When being in preschool, I have come across children who I have had difficulties to really meet, and I have felt that the communication between me and the child has been deficient. Since I believe that the meeting of child and pedagogue is essential to learning and development, I find this an important subject of further study.The purpose of my study is to investigate if, and how, teachers regard a possible connection between language capability and behaviour. Furthermore I investigate how they work with language acquisition and communication, and what argument the pedagogues have for this work.To answer these questions I have interviewed two pedagogues who have great knowledge and experience of this subject, and also have special interest in children?s language and communication.In my literary review I give an account of how language acquisition is described in literature, and then compare it with how Language impairment reveals. I also describe earlier research on how to work with language development, and what the national curriculum for preschools (Lpfö 98) say on this topic.The result shows that my informants divide in their view of how to connect language capability to behaviour.

Repetition of Non- word (make- up word that has not some semantic content) has been proposed as a reliable index of phonological memory in children with Language impairment (LI). The aim of this study was to find out the possible similarities and differences concerning phonotactic non-words and working memory in 18 bilingual Swedish-Arabic children with and without LI ages 4-6 years. The investigation was undertaken by conducting three tests including NEPSY, WPPSI-III and a Word repetition test. The results showed that there are not significant differences between the two groups regarding various parts of NEPSY. On the other hand the results showed two significant differences in WPPSI-III regarding Picture categories and Word repetition tests for Swedish Non-word.