Sentence Structure Help

[charlotteb]

I have a DD who is 10 years old and in 4th grade.  She was adopted almost 2 years ago from foster care and we are in our second year of homeschooling. Besides just being behind in school from years of foster care, we are also thinking she may have some other issues at hand.  We are working to get diagnoses on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and/or Audio Processing Disorder or something else? We have an apppointment with a developmental specialist this summer.   She has made HUGE improvements in many areas at home though, namely in her reading.  However, her sentence structure is very behind. She will write a sentence like "I had a observe" or "I experiment the dog".  She doesn't talk like this so it confuses me that she writes like it.  Her vocabulary is a bit low as well so maybe its not understanding the definition of the words.  But she also seems to struggle with using correct tenses in sentences and understanding parts of speech.  Any recommendations of what I could use to help her with this? Or should I just wait for our diagnosis??

[PeterPan]

Sounds like you might want to go ahead and get an SLP eval as well, unless that will be part of the team with your developmental ped.

[kbutton]

I have no experience with this. Would it help to explicitly teach her (for now) the different ways that words change when we use them? This would involve directly teaching the principal parts of verbs as well as how observe turns into observation, observatory, etc. She probably will need instruction on how to change the spellings for the different forms as well, and then she'll need to know what article to put with different words (an observation, not a observation). Without direct teaching, kids don't necessarily know that baby turns to babies (drop the y and add es). And we have exceptions to that also (cookie/cookies instead of cooky/cookies--though old cookbooks have cooky in them).

 

My younger son is too little to be tested for auditory processing troubles, but he has many red flags. He also bombed a screening that indicates he needs to be tested. I could see him doing this if his condition were a bit worse--he's actually realized through learning to read that he has heard words incorrectly for a long time, and he makes a mental note of things that he's learned wrong and fixes them. He struggles greatly with self-talk though. If it's noisy at all, he can't process language in his head, even if he's reading or telling himself something in his own mind. I imagine a lot of people have to talk to themselves in their heads when they write. If your daughter does have auditory processing problems, maybe her self-talk is not as clear in her head as her speech is. It's also probably harder for her to catch verb tenses and things naturally, though it is odd that she is okay when she speaks. Perhaps the writing is behind simply because it takes so many different thinking processes to write that she makes mistakes more easily. My son isn't doing much writing yet (Kindergarten), but he tends to make the same speaking mistakes as print mistakes so far.

 

I am glad you are getting evaluations! It's hard to wait that long, but it will be worth it.

[Pen]

Have you tried asking her what she meant to write?

Thence perhaps showing the difference between what she meant to put down and what she did put down?

 

She may need you to scribe for her, or to use a recording device so that the act of composing is kept separate from the act of getting words on paper.

 

I found Bravewriter a helpful approach.

Using BW jargon, she may still be at the Partnership writing stage and not yet ready to go it alone.

 

Some form of dyslexia/dysgraphia might also be present.

 

Does she read well?

--ETA: I know you wrote her reading is hugely improved--but that leaves it still unclear what level it is actually at.

With my son trying to do writing before his reading was at his grade/age/interest level...or even well above...was unproductive.--

If not, you might want to focus on reading,

and, for grammar, looking at sentences you read, and how they are formed.

 

--ETA: I assume English was her first language?

Do you know anything about the quality of language exposure in her foster home(s)?--

[Heathermomster]

As others have mentioned, you are likely going to need to back up and teach explicitly and systematically.  What materials are you currently using?

[Momling]

Sounds like SLI - Specific Language Impairment. I'd get an evaluation through your school district and/or with a private speech/language pathologist along with the rest of the testing.

[Momling]

Double post sorry...

[geodob]

An important part of 'self talk', is 'auditory rehearsal'.

Where we rehearse how we will write a sentence, before we write it.

Which is where we also work out the tenses of word,

But if a sentence can't be rehearsed?

Then it may be written as list of points, rather than a sentence.

Your examples of:  "I had a observe" or "I experiment the dog".

Are really the points, that can then be formed into a sentence.

 

So that she might not be rehearsing how a sentence will be written?