Language is divided into three areas:  form (grammar, phonological awareness, phonology), content (semantics), and use (pragmatics).  Students can experience difficulty with one or all of these areas.  In addition, students may have trouble with these skills receptively and/or expressively.

         1.  Grammar is the understanding and use of the parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns).  It also includes

               the understanding and use of sentence strucure and word order.

         2.  Semantics is the understanding and use that words have meanings, words can be compared, and words can be

               categorized based on their meanings

         3.  Phonology is the understanding and use of the patterns of sounds in our language.

         4.  Phonological Awareness includes the ability to hear and produce rhymes, break words apart into syllables or sounds

              blend syllables or sounds to make words, change sounds within words to make new words.

         5.  Pragmatics is the manner in which we use language to communicate.  This area includes the ability to appropriately

              use language to have positive social interactions with others in a variety of settings.