What is Special Educational Needs (SEN)?

Speech and Language Impairment

Speech and Language Impairment (SLI) is a communication disorder that interferes with the development of language skills. SLI can affect a person’s speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The common types of SLI amongst school-aged students are subdivided into four major categories:

• Articulation Problem: It refers to mispronunciation of words due to various causes to the extent that other people cannot understand what is being said, such as mispronouncing “say” as “day”.
• Language Problem: Students may fail to fully understand the information conveyed in a message, which leads to misunderstanding or even communication breakdown. Children with weak organization skills or limited vocabulary would have difficulties in conveying their messages. 
• Fluency Problem: It is also known as stammering, refers to the condition in which the flow of speech is interrupted by repetition of syllables or words, or prolongation of sounds, or the speech rate is too fast or too slow, or blocks. 
• Voice Problem: It refers to hoarseness, loss of voice, excessively high/low pitch, difficulties in controlling the loudness of voice, hyper- or hypo-nasality, etc. due to various causes.