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Types of Language Delays

Perhaps you have noticed that your child or a student in your classroom is exhibiting a problem with speech. He might be suffering from a language delay problem. Four main categories of language delay problems exist, and they are known as receptive language delay, expressive language delay, phonological disorder and multi-component disruptions.

  1. Receptive Language Delay

    • Individuals with receptive language delays do not understand what people around them are saying. For example, they might not be able to follow more than one step of a set of directions at a time or they may ignore questions, since they do not know what is being said. Another characteristic is that they understand the individual words. However, when they are strung together in a phrase or a sentence, the meaning becomes entirely unclear to them.

    Expressive Language Disorder

    • Individuals with developmental expressive language disorder start to have problems with using words from the moment they begin to speak. Individuals who have the acquired type of this delay have trouble speaking due to some sort of severe accident that impaired their ability. It is not that these individuals have trouble producing the sounds of words. They cannot put sentences together properly, do not use the appropriate grammar and have trouble figuring out the correct word.

    Phonological Disorder

    • Other names for this type of delay include speech sound production disorder, articulation disorder and developmental articulation disorder. Individuals with this type of problem have issues with the actual pronunciation of the correct sounds in words. The inability to form the appropriate sounds leads to the child not being able to speak at a level that is expected at his age. Sometimes the letters are just slightly off, while in other cases the child cannot be understood at all.

    Multi-Component Disruptions

    • As with all types of problems and ailments, people are not limited to only one category of the issue. A child could be struggling with any combination of the aforementioned types of speech delay. In that case, the individual is said to have multi-component disruptions. A child might not be able to understand what people around her are saying, and she might not be able to produce the correct sound patterns to speak herself either.

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