Teachers talk to language-delayed children

Kindergarten teachers were asked to teach a language-Bingo task to individual studentswhom they had designated and were subsequently diagnosed as language-delayed (LD) and normal so that each child could then independently teach and play the game with a classmate. The teacherchild verbal interactions were analysed to determine wnether and in what ways the teachers' talk to LD children differed from that to the normal children.Teachers did not make grammatical modifications when addressing the LD children, nor did they alter the quantity of content communicated to this group. However, their speech was more redundant and more concrete when interacting with the LD children than withthe normals. Furthermore the verbal strategies with the LD children were more orientedto actively involving these children in interaction than those used with the normal children.