Impact of Communication Impairment
What is the impact of communication impairment on people and society?
As teachers, it is imperative that we understand the needs of our students and how their impairment impacts their daily living and society. As statistics indicate, numerous people in Australia are living with communication impairment every day. This impairment can greatly impact a persons life in numerous ways and many of these are not positive.
For a student with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) this may result in bullying. There is an increased risk of a child being bullied who has communication difficulties (Knox & Conti-Ramsden, 2003). This may take the form of being ignored or excluded by peers, or not being asked to join in social activities. The authors also state that "children’s learning difficulties, emotional problems and their lack of social skills made them more vulnerable to experiencing bullying behaviour in school". To further highlight the impact of having such impairment, a research study suggested that young children without communication impairments were consistently chosen by peers for social interactions, further highlighting the exclusion factor (2003).
An insight into just some of the difficulties in everyday life for a student with a communication and learning difficulties is outlined by a case study of a student named Joe (Zundans, 2003). Joe highlights very important concerns of not being able to ‘fit in’ with other students. He feels that he is labelled by teachers, which brings about an important point for teachers to be conscience of. That is the attitude that teachers display towards students with such impairments. Giving recognition to a student for effort may encourage them further to continue doing well. In regards to completing work tasks at school, Joe stated "I could think of the words but I couldn’t write them down exactly". This clearly indicates the frustration that students feel at not being able to adequately express themselves and may provide a false impression from others that they are unable to do the work.
Image: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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