Regardless of your discipline, determining intervention priorities for children who have a range of speech, language, and communication challenges raises questions of how best to communicate with these children. Knowing what level of language to use to assure comprehension during clinical or educational interactions requires a deep understanding of the foundations of language. In addition, clinicians and educators are often faced with the parents’ questions about how best to facilitate their child’s development of communication.

Participants will be introduced to a contemporary developmental language paradigm (DOLLI, Gerber & Ricamato, 2023) which can be used to understand the typical language acquisition process, assess a child’s profile of strengths and challenges in the foundations of language, and generate goals for children at various stages of language and communication development.

The advantages of a protocol that goes seamlessly from assessment to intervention will be considered. Since all therapeutic/educational interactions involve communication and language, all professionals working with children with challenges in these areas can more successfully accomplish their goals with greater awareness of the language acquisition trajectory.

For practitioners who use the DIR® Model, some of the capacities discussed will be familiar. For those new to the DIR® model and/or contemporary perspectives on language acquisition and assessment, introduction to this paradigm will provide a cohesive framework for understanding and treating children with language challenges. Finally, the DOLLI (2023) checklist can be used to assess progress over time and therefore, is a valuable tool for collecting quantitative and qualitative data.

Special note: There are a few materials that participants will be asked to review before beginning the course. Additionally, participants will be asked to prepare one DOLLI (2023) assessment using a videotape provided by the instructors.