What is a Written Language Disorder?
Communication is essential to everyday life: understanding directions in the classroom, conversing with friends and family, reading instructions or writing a letter.

The ability to express oneself in oral language involves organization of thoughts, formulation of the message, the ability to use vocabulary, sentence structure, and syntax the listener will understand. This very same ability is the prerequisite for written language.

Problems in written language are evident in children who have difficulty in thinking of what to write (topic selection), expanding on information (appropriate detail), organization and structure at even the sentence level. Children may exhibit these difficulties early on in school, but experience the most difficulties academically in the higher elementary grades and up. Many children who exhibit a written language impairment may already be diagnosed as “learning disabled” or as having an “expressive language disorder.” Even students who have received therapy for an expressive language disorder may need further assistance to apply the skills to writing.

Therapy Approach
Writing is a natural extension of the whole language environment. It requires not just an understanding of the mechanics of writing, but a facility with language structure and organization as a whole. Therefore, a holistic approach to learning to write well must integrate the skills involved in written constructions and expressive language development into a comprehensive unit.

In ARC’s program, children learn to approach writing as a systematic process moving from pre-writing activities (brainstorming, researching), to outlining purpose and audience (structuring, mapping), to making specific content revisions for a finished product (editing).

During the "brainstorming" process, students learn to utilize imagery to verbalize their ideas using “structure words” such as size, movement and background to direct their expressive language and form a whole picture or “gestalt.” They learn to use their expressive output to formulate a written product. Students then learn to edit their papers for grammar, content, punctuation, organization, and fluency.

The process is taught in a peer group atmosphere, which greatly enhances motivation and idea formulation. Rather than having a teacher impose ideas on the student as in an individual setting, the peer group exchanges ideas and helps to stimulate each other’s thoughts during the brainstorming, formulation, and editing processes. The teacher assumes the role of facilitator for this exchange.

Results
This program was developed as part of our ongoing clinical research and development of programs for treating reading and writing disorders. The results of a pilot program were presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in 2002. Although every child begins at a different level and has different individual needs, the results achieved with this method in this clinic have been impressive.

Improvement was measured through a standardized test called the Test of Written Language. There were major gains in structure and organization, elaboration, use of grammar and punctuation, and fluency of written works. Children who were diagnosed with expressive language disorder and had received language therapy using the Visualizing & Verbalizing™ program prior to the writing program achieved greatest improvement. But even students with expressive weaknesses who had not participated in language therapy prior to the program improved significantly in written language skills.

The minimum overall improvement in spontaneous writing for any child who participated was 45 percentile points, with some children achieving as many as 68 percentile points improvement - equivalent to 6 grade levels. The group environment also has a positive impact on the student’s motivation to engage in the writing process even after the therapy has ended.

A Total Immersion Summer Program
Groups are offered in morning and/or afternoon sessions for two hours each day, Monday through Friday, for a five-week period. Groups are limited to four participants. Most of the activities are group participation, so that all students can benefit from a variety of approaches to a given task. Each student individually generates a “written product” for each type of writing format introduced.

This program changes the way the student approaches writing and language. It does not lend itself to casual tutoring. We therefore immerse the student in the program to make it truly effective. There is also daily homework during the course, which is why we offer intensive summer programs, so that the child can concentrate fully on the demands of this program, and return to school with improved skills and an attitude that writing is fun.

The Follow-Up
The skills that are established in a five week intensive program must be practiced and carried into the classroom writing environment. At the end of the SIW program, we provide an individualized full report on the child's progress and instructional planning for the child's further growth in written language. Individual continuation sessions are available in our clinics throughout the school year with the same highly skilled therapists who lead the summer intensive programs. Some students may need further development of higher order thinking skills or classroom skills like note-taking and text analysis. Our clinicians will help parents identify these needs and provide consultation and treatment when appropriate.

Dates and Times:

Summer sessions are scheduled for the first and second halves of the summer, usually two morning slots and one afternoon slot are available. Please call the AFC office to arrange for an individual schedule. We also offer the intensive program during the school year but do not offer after-school hours.

We offer sessions at both the Centreville, VA and College Park, MD locations.

Cost:
The cost of our full 60-hour program is based on our current per-hour fee schedule. For a current fee schedule please call the AFC office at (703) 266-5741. The fee includes:

• all materials for use in treatment and for home practice
• 6 parental information conferences
• follow-up planning with complete report to school

For further inquiries or to obtain an application form, please call our office. Applications for therapy programs are not available via the web. To enroll in this particular program, you must contact our clinic and speak with a therapist.

E-mail Information: All e-mail addresses on our website are written in a manner so as to block programs on the web looking for e-mail addresses to spam. When e-mailing, "someone (at) somewhere (.) com" should be understood as "someone@somewhere.com". We apologize for any confusion.

PLEASE NOTE: LiPS®, Visualizing & Verbalizing™, and V/V™ are registered trade/service marks of the Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes™. LBLP in no way guarantees the quality of the services suplied by AFC. AFC is not affiliated with, certified, licensed, monitored or sponsored by LBLP, Nanci Bell, Phyllis Lindamood or Pat Lindamood.