國小高年級語言障礙學生口語說明與對話能力之初探

Examining Performance of Expository and Conversational Discourse in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Language Impairment

本研究旨在探討國小高年級正常發展學生與語言障礙學生口語說明與對話能力，以「對話」及「說明」作業（「遊戲或運動」和「同儕衝突」）收集學生的語言樣本，進行語意、語法與迷走語之分析。主要發現如下：(1)語意方面，兩組學生在對話中所使用的總詞彙數、校正後相異詞出現率，較說明作業多；組間比較顯示語言障礙學生的校正後相異詞出現率顯著低於正常發展學生，呈現語意能力的缺陷。(2)語法方面，兩組學生在對話時所產生的「總主謂句」、「介詞」、「連詞」的數量均較說明為多，而說明的「平均主謂句長度」較對話長；在組間比較方面，語言障礙學生的「平均主謂句長度」明顯較正常發展學生短，顯示此一計量較能反應國小高年級學生的語法能力。(3)迷走語方面，對話與說明作業的「迷走語比率」無顯著差異，但「遊戲或運動」作業的迷走語數量最少；組間比較上，無論是迷走語數量或比率，均未有顯著差異。整體而言，本研究發現「校正後相異詞出現率」與「平均主謂句長度」為有效區辨語言障礙的指標，而「同儕衝突」作業是較適合評量國小高年級學生說明能力的語言作業。

Expository discourse is an important genre to understand the growth of language production， especially the syntactic development of individuals through childhood to adolescence. The purpose of this study aimed to investigate and compare the language performance of expository and conversational discourses in Mandarin-speaking children with language impairment (LI) and typically developing age-matched peers (TD). An initial attempt was also made to explore the most competent task and language measures to indicate the performance differences of these two groups in Mandarin expository discourse. In this study， 10 LI aged 10;10 - 12;8 (years; months) and 10 TD participated in general conversation and expository discourse were elicited in the “peer conflict resolution task” and “favorite game or sport task”. Each language sample was transcribed and segmented into Chinese simple sentences. Expository and conversational samples were analyzed for several language variables (e.g. number different words， type token ratio， corrected type token ratio， number of conjunction/preposition/mazes， percentage of Maze words， total subject-predicate sentences， and mean length of subject-predicate sentences). Results of this study indicated that children with LI have inferior semantic and syntactic abilities than their age-matched peers in the conversational and expository discourses. In Mandarin， expository discourse was also a more sensitive genre than conversation to examine syntactic ability of older children. Moreover， the peer conflict resolution task could elicit greater syntactic complexity than favorite game or sport task.