Overcoming the complexities of everyday language

By Jim Barlow, Office of Communications

OK, imagine 32 children, ages seven to 15, using these words and acronyms in a conversation with adults: adjournment, adjudication, antipositional, bind, blockade, blunder, castling, counterplay, desperado, double attack, ECO, E.P., FIDE, Indian opening, j'adoube, novelty, open file, Zugzwang.

Hedco Chair Marilyn Nippold of the College of Education

Do the terms check and checkmate help to identify the topic?

Marilyn A. Nippold, a speech-language pathologist and Hedco Professor of the University of Oregon's College of Education, didn't study the children's use of such a listing. She did, however, look at how well the chess-playing youngsters could describe the game, including its goals, rules, pieces and strategies, in spoken language.

The children were experienced players, some more expert than others, recruited from chess clubs in Oregon. A U.S. chess master helped classify and rank the skill levels of the students based on transcripts of their explanations, without knowing the purpose of the study.

Nippold joined the college's department of communication disorders and sciences in 1982. She studies the use of complex language in young school-age children, adolescents and young adults, seeking patterns of strengths and weaknesses and pursuing interventions.

Her latest findings have her pondering a different approach: Instead of taking language-struggling students out of classrooms for basic therapy, she asks, why not put therapists in the classrooms where problems occur, so breakdowns in language skills can be addressed as they come up?

Her idea is driven partly by the chess study, on which she presented preliminary findings in July at a conference in the United Kingdom, and a separate study published, also in July, in the journal Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools on the use of two forms of complex words by fifth- and eighth-graders.

The studies are part of a series of efforts to understand language abilities in the different age groups. A trend is emerging. "We are finding that when we ask children to talk about topics that interest them, such as chess, baseball or karate, we observe a stronger use of language than when they talk about less intriguing topics, even in those who have diagnosed learning and language disorders," Nippold said. "They rise to the occasion."

In the chess study, researchers expected the experts to use more complexity in discussing the game than would novices. In her presentation to the 11th International Congress for the Study of Child Language at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, Nippold detailed a surprising finding: Both novice and expert players, regardless of age, used the complex nuances of the chess language in answering a series of technical questions about the game. The only difference, she said, was that expert players used the terminology and complex words more precisely and accurately -- reflecting more their skill level rather than their language abilities. The full findings are being prepared for journal publication.

In the study published in July, Nippold and graduate student Lei Sun analyzed the use of morphologically complex words by 46 fifth-graders and 48 eighth-graders in a small, rural Oregon school district. Specifically, they measured the students' understanding of derived adjectives (words such as acceptable, consolable, penniless, digestive, reptilian and secretive) and derived nominals (concealment, federalism, germination, citizenship and tactfulness, for example). Such words are commonly used in textbooks used for teaching science, mathematics, social studies, health and literature, Nippold said.

"Children's reading comprehension is very much affected by how well they can decipher and understand these words," she said. "We found that derived adjectives and derived nominals were understood better by the older students. Fifth-graders were challenged. By eighth grade, they do quite well with these words."

Nippold, an avid long-distance runner for more than 30 years, entered the field of speech-language pathology in the 1970s, after having earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and working as a teacher's aide in a southern California preschool. At that time, the assumption was that language acquisition was basically complete by age 5. By the time she earned her doctorate in 1982 from Purdue University, her studies of middle-school students convinced her that language development is a protracted process, and that experience and exposure to complex language results in continued growth even into adulthood.

Children by age 5, she said, can produce complex language, such as subordinate clauses, but as they get older they do so more frequently. Fifth grade, Nippold explained, is a time when the ability to analyze the morphological structure of words starts to kick in. "These children can break down the word into its parts and tell you what it means. Younger children don't do that well at all. We need to be studying this process at earlier ages to start getting children on the right track earlier -- no later than second grade. Younger children who are at risk for language difficulties can become more analytical if we get to them earlier."

What she and her long-time collaborators from the University of Iowa and Purdue University are finding, she said, has many implications for both assessment and intervention. A key seems to be the level of a child's knowledge and engagement in any topic at hand.

"If you ask children to talk about an interesting topic about which they are knowledgeable, they show that they have the ability to use very complex language," Nippold said.

Many children can benefit from the findings of her long-running research efforts, she said. By tapping a child's knowledge and interests, speech-language pathologists, as wells as teachers, can help to bring out complex language in children -- and get them comfortable using it and applying the skills to other subjects, she said.

"The ability to speak effectively gives them confidence and can make a big difference. It ties into their success academically and vocationally," Nippold said. "There are many children out there in schools who are not using language to the full extent that they could. There are many jobs in the workplace today that expect the use of clear, complex language. Some people struggle with that. Speech-language pathologists and teachers can promote children’s growth in these areas by working together with students in the classroom."

Nippold is on sabbatical this academic year, working on a book concerning the use of complex language by school-age children, adolescents and adults. She is a co-editor with Cheryl M. Scott, a speech-language pathologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Source: Marilyn A. Nippold, Hedco Chair, professor of communication disorders and sciences, 541-346-2587, nippold@uoregon.edu