Highest Number of Children with Speech and Language Challenges Ever Recorded

Highest Number of Children with Speech and Language Challenges Ever Recorded

Every 5th modern child of primary school age has problems with their speech. This is according to British researchers from Speech and Language UK, who have summarized the results of another large-scale project to analyze the linguistic abilities of children. This is the highest figure in the history of observation because it means that as many as 1.9 million children within the country have big difficulties in the area of understanding and speaking, which are almost impossible to overcome without the help of specialists. While bilingual children can get additional help from a speech and language therapist at https://www.govorika.com/russkoyazychnye-logopedy-v-ssha/, for native-speaker children, school systems and practices will be changed to address identified problems.

What Have the Results of the School-Based Research Survey Showed?

The survey titled “Listening to unheard children” was conducted among teachers and educators of primary and middle schools. More than 1000 school employees responded to the detailed questions of specialists. The conclusions that can be confidently drawn by analyzing their answers are:

• the number of children who fall behind the methodological norms continues to increase every year
• more than 80% of teachers note that many children in their groups have speech problems with pronunciation and understanding of basic words.
• at the same time, only about half of the teachers report that their level of professionalism in the sphere of solving speech therapy issues is sufficient to help their students cope with difficulties

What Changes Need to be Introduced in Education Systems

International charities that have been funding and conducting research on monitoring the speech skills of the next generation for many years are calling on governments to make the issue a priority and introduce important changes to the education system:

1. The development and as immediate as possible introduction of new tools to identify and monitor children's speech skills from the earliest stages.
2. Additional training for preschool and school personnel so they can efficiently notice and help students who may have trouble pronouncing and understanding words.
3. Creation of basic language training programs that will make it possible to provide new skills to kids of different ages without the involvement of speech therapists. 

What Can Parents Do to Help Their Children

At a fundamental level, help for children with language problems must be extensive and comprehensive. Involving families and parents in supporting their children becomes one of the key ways to address the problem of today's children learning quality speech skills. Govorika is a speech therapy online school whose main mission is to help children master the language in the correct manner and form. Pronunciation problems, which are often impossible to deal with without professional advice, will be solved without any major difficulties in a playful way with full inclusion of the kids' attention. Such projects help families to support and improve their child's speech skills from the moment communication begins until the child has fully mastered language acquisition, whether it is their first or a foreign language.