5-10 per cent of children need language help

Between five and 10 per cent of Maltese children are expected to have a significant speech or language difficulty that needs to be addressed by a speech-language pathologist, studies have shown.

One of the main challenges in a bilingual world is to differentiate between language impairment and the development of more than one language, according to Helen Grech, head of the University’s Communication Therapy Department.

Dr Grech is also a local representative of Cost Action IS0804, an EU-funded network of researchers managed locally by the Malta Council for Science and Technology, seeking to develop tools to identify bilingual children with language impairment.

“When children show signs of speech and language difficulties, it is easy to mistake their different adaptation to a second language for a language disorder,” lecturer Daniela Gatt, another local Cost representative, said.

Some children suffer information overload when they are exposed to multiple languages, and therefore adopt particular routes to acquire bilingualism. However, others express a persistent problem in acquiring language.

Detecting speech and language impairment early is very effective as it has an impact on children’s learning and lifestyle.

“It is imperative to detect speech and language impairment at an early age, but we must keep in mind that if children exhibit a difficulty to learn a second language, it doesn’t mean they have language impairment.

“In Malta, it is inevitable that children, at an early age, are exposed to more than one language, and different learners have different ways of acquiring a language and exhibit different patterns of development,” Dr Gatt said.