15 The Development of Precursors to Literacy in Mentally Disabled Children Debra Marais and Erna Alant Department of Communication Pathology University of Pretoria ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate metalinguistic precursors to literacy in mentally handicapped children, with a view to improve literacy training in this population. Language proficiency and environmental literacy factors were explored, and an analysis was made of proficiency in several metalinguistic tasks (i.e., higher level language awareness skills). Six children who are educable mentally retarted, with mental ages between five and seven years (chronological ages between six and sixteen years) were assessed. Results showed that environmental factors of literacy socialisation and print awareness were adequate, with reasonable exposure to literacy artifacts and events. Language abilities were also adequately developed. Isolated metalinguistic skills (e.g., phonemic segmentation) had developed in those children who had received reading instruction, however, most metalinguistic precursors were not adequately developed for their mental ages and were below a five year level. OPSOMMING Hierdie studie het verskeie voorlopers tot geletterdheid ondersoek onder ses verstandelik gestremde hinders, met die oog op verbetering van leesvaardigheid van verstandelik gestremde kinders. Die kinders se verstandsouderdomme was almal tussen vyf en sewe jaar, met kronologiese ouderdomme tussen ses en sestien jaar. Taalvaardigheid en omgewingsgeletterdheid-faktore is ondersoek, sowel as hulle vaardigheid met die verskillende metalinguistiese take (m.a.w. ho'er kognitiewe taalbewustheid). Die bevindinge het bevestig dat omgewingsfaktore van skrifbewustheid voldoende was met aanvaarbare blootstelling aan geskrewe items en leesgebeurtenisse. Taalvaardigheid was ook toepaslik. Die kinders wat reeds leesinstruksie ontvang het, het ontwikkeling van ge'isoleerde metalinguistiese vaardighede vertoon (bv. fonetiese analise), maar die meerderheid metalinguistiese voorlopers tot geletterdheid was nie toepaslik vir hulle verstandsouderdomme nie en was onder 'n vyfjarige vlak. Literacy is not merely an academic pursuit, but has become an essential skill for many employment oppor- tunities, for daily living activities such as shopping and cooking and also for recreation. It is particularly im- portant for mentally disabled people if they are to at- tain a measure of independent functioning in everyday life (Singh & Singh, 1986).1 Research (Riese, 1956 in Singh & Singh, 1986) which indicated that trainable mentally handicapped people could be taught to read more than a few simple words has led to the reassessment of our expectations and the need to develop appropriate instruction techniques for teaching them to read. This re-evaluation has led us to reconsider their potential despite many difficulties mentally handicapped children have on language, cog- nitive and perceptual levels. This introduction will mention some shifts in read- ing models, explain how reading can be redefined as a metalinguistic task, and explain the implications of this in the light of cognitive psychological research in men- tal retardation. Some questions will be posed regard- ing the area of metalinguistic abilities in reading ac- quisition and instruction, and how the speech-language pathologist in whose domain this area falls can play a role in developing more effective intervention and in- struction techniques for facilitating reading acquisition in the mentally handicapped population. Research into reading and reading acquisition has begun to investigate the higher cognitive functions as- sociated with reading. Reading can be redefined as primarily cognitive and linguistic, rather than visual and perceptual (Reid, 1981). Reading acquisition mod- els have introduced the concept of reading evolution where reading is viewed as a gradual, spontaneous pro- cess beginning with the holistic attribution of meaning to print, and later becoming refined so that knowledge about the component elements of language is mastered (Reid, 1981). This knowledge of the components of lan- guage can essentially be seen as a metalinguistic skill. Tunmer, Pratt & Herriman (1984) have defined a metalinguistic skill as the ability to reflect upon and manipulate structural features of spoken language, treating language itself as an object of thought. Read- ing acquisition is a complex process which requires the learner to distance himself from spoken words in order to analyse them and impose a new form and structure on l a n g u a g e . The strong c o r r e l a t i o n b e t w e e n metalinguistic ability and reading ability suggests that Die Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kommunikasieafwykings, Vol. 41, 1994 R ep ro du ce d by S ab in et G at ew ay u nd er li ce nc e gr an te d by th e P ub lis he r (d at ed 2 01 2) 16 Debra Marais & Erna Alant reading is essentially a metalinguistic task (Flood & Salus, 1982). Researchers (Cherkes-Julkowski & Gertner, 1989; Reid, 1981; Berger & Reid, 1989) have shown that improved meta-cognitive strategies (e.g., meta-memory) can be elicited through training, but tend not to be invoked spontaneously by mentally handi- capped children and adults, as well as by children with language disorders. This has led to the hypothesis that mental handicap is primarily a meta-cognitive disorder (Cherkes-Julkowski & Gertner, 1989). Since mentally handicapped children need assistance with the development of meta-cognitive skills such as reading, it is possible that they would benefit from spe- cific training in metalinguistic skills, particularly those which aid to reading acquisition. There is little re- search dealing with these aspects of learning to read (Singh & Singh, 1986), so it is necessary to draw on knowledge in this field from the development of normal children. Current theory in research on preliteracy develop- ment ( Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987) indicates that the development of the "early underpinnings of literacy" begins long before formal schooling. This " wealth of knowledge many pre-school children gain about print before they actually learn how to read" has been termed emergent literacy (Van Kleeck, 1990; Garton & Pratt, 1989). These emergent literacy skills not only form the foundation for formal reading instruction, but some skills such as phonemic segmentation skills and aware- ness of aural word boundaries have even been cited as predicators of reading achievement (Share, Jorm, McLeams & M a t t h e w s , 1984 in Tunmer, Pratt & Herriman, 1984; Evans, 1987 in van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987). Some models have been proposed in order to describe and investigate these skills. The framework used by Van Kleeck and Schuele (1987) will be used in the following discussion. Two main areas of consideration in emergent literacy are literacy socialisation and language awareness (Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987). Firstly, literacy socialisation is the broad social and cultural aspect of learning to read. This can be divided into three main areas: lit- eracy artifacts; literacy events; and knowledge about print, which is acquired before learning to read. Secondly, language awareness or metalinguistic skill is knowledge about the linguistic code which is needed for mastering literacy. The main aspects of language awareness are: word consciousness, knowledge that language is a system with elements and rules, and pho- nological awareness. The metalinguistic area of preliteracy knowledge and its relation to formal reading instruction has become a controversial topic of research which has developed into a debate of the chicken and the egg. However, despite differing theoretical viewpoints, reading acquisition at pre-school level has become a valid concern for speech- l a n g u a g e p a t h o l o g i s t s , d ue to its l a n g u a g e and metalinguistic basis (Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987). Research which has shown that metalinguistic skills are underdeveloped in learning disabled children (Kamhi & Koenig, 1985; Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987) has led to investigation into alternative strategies in reading in- struction. This area of emergent literacy, and particu- larly those metalinguistic skills which children with learning problems have difficulty mastering, can now be assessed and remediated ( Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987). If mentally handicapped children also experi- ence difficulty with metalinguistic skills related to emer- gent literacy, then these developments in intervention could prove to be valuable in improving the quality of reading instruction for mentally handicapped children. Van Kleeck (1990) stated that facilitation of the foun- dations of literacy plays an integral part in the process of reading acquisition as it provides a solid foundation on which to build further literacy experiences. If men- tally handicapped children are to benefit from this ap- proach, more needs to be known about their develop- ment and mastery of these emergent literacy skills. For this reason, this study aims to investigate emergent lit- eracy skills in mentally handicapped children. METHOD This study aimed to describe the development of metalinguistic (language awareness) precursors to lit- eracy in six mentally handicapped children of mental ages between five and seven years (chronological ages between six and sixteen years) who had received vary- ing amounts of formal reading instruction. Since the procedure used in conducting this study is described in more detail elsewhere (Marais, 1991) only a brief out- line of the method and aims is given here. Six subjects were selected from special schools for mentally handicapped children in consultation with their teachers according to the following criteria: - Cognitive developmental age comparable to ages four to seven, since this is the age level in which precur- sors to literacy develop in normal children (van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987; Smith & Tager-Flusberg, .1982 and Fox & Routh, 1975). - Chronological age between six and sixteen years since this is the traditional school-going age, and the time in which these abilities will be developed and used during reading training in mentally handicapped children. - Intelligence: Educable mentally handicapped chil- dren, (i.e., an IQ of approximately between 50 and 70). ι - Socio-economic background: Good socio-economic status with exposure to literacy artifacts andj events in the home to exclude factors of environment depri- vation. | - Home language: All subjects have the same home language for the purpose of uniformity in testing. Afrikaans was selected. Please refer to Table 1 for a description of the sub- jects. A test battery was compiled using material available for the sample group as well as adapted and translated . subtests drawn from research (Fox & Routh, 1975; Smith & Tager-Flusberg, 1982). A pilot study was conducted before formal testing began to ensure the test battery was suitable for a five year old Afrikaans speaking child: Testing was done in two sessions to complete the test battery, and the data was analysed according to the re- sults available in research and standardised tests. Each candidate's parents were interviewed to obtain a case history and relevant information regarding literacy de- The South African Journal of Communication Disorders, Vol. 41, 1994 R ep ro du ce d by S ab in et G at ew ay u nd er li ce nc e gr an te d by th e P ub lis he r (d at ed 2 01 2) The Development of Precursors to Literacy in Mentally Disabled Children 17 * segmenting sentences into words i.e., the ability to isolate a separate word from the acoustic flow of speech - this is also closely linked with word consciousness in normal children and has been identified as a significant predictor of early read- ing achievement (Evans et al., 1979; McNick, 1974 in Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987). * phonological awareness i.e., the ability to analyse a spoken word into its component syllables and phonological units and also to synthesize these units to produce a word. Language play such as rhyming also reflects this ability. Three tasks were used on a sub-word level: - segmentation of bisyllabic words, - analysis of single syllables into sounds and - a rhyming task. RESULTS Firstly language and cognitive functioning were as- sessed. Four subjects displayed a general cognitive level between 6-0 and 6-9 years, with subject A obtaining an age equivalent of 5-3 years and Β of 4-9 years. All ex- cept subject A had above average scores for receptive vocabulary, using norms for 6-0 years ( Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, PPVT). Expressive language profiles for the TMT (Afrikaans Test of Oral Language Produc- Table 1. Description of subjects Chrono- logical age Sex Draw-a-man age level 1Q Approx. (·) Medical diagnosis ( * ) Exposure to literacy training ( * ) 6,2 yrs Μ 5,3 yrs Not available Down Syndrome No formal training Use of Bliss symbols 10,6 yrs F ,4,9 yrs Not available Athetoid Elementary grapheme- phoneme matching. Three letter word analysis and synthesis. 12,3 yrs Μ 6,0 yrs I j 56 Spastic diplegic Limited sight vocabulary Grade 1 reader level. Elementary grapheme-phoneme matching, word analysis and synthesis. 13,2 yrs F 6,3 yrs 58 Head injury at at age 5y 5m Limited sight vocabulary. Some grapheme-phoneme matching. 14,8 yrs F 6,9 yrs 63 Cerebral handicap Well developed analysis and synthesis of short words, with grapheme-phoneme matching. Reading comprehension good, writing functional. 15,11 yrs Μ 6,3 yrs 52 Cerebral handicap with epilepsy. Good analysis and synthesis of short words with grapheme- phoneme matching. Writing functional. (*) Obtained from school files and teachers Die Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kommunikasieafwykings, Vol. 41, 1994 v e l o p m e n t a n d the l i t e r a c y s o c i a l i s a t i o n b a c k g r o u n d . (Checklists u s e d w e r e a d a p t e d from those listed in Van Kleeck, 1990.) The formal test battery covered the following areas, using the framework in Van Kleeck (1987) as well as language and cognitive test material: - Language and cognitive functioning using the Draw- a-man test (Goodenough, 1926), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Afrikaans translation) (Gouws, 1975), and the Afrikaans Test of Oral Language (Vorster, 1980). - Literacy Socialisation was assessed in two ways, firstly the family background and home and school environments were analysed using checklists and a rating was given. Secondly, the subject's print aware- ness was assessed using the book-handling and situ- ation dependent print subtests (Edmiaston, 1988 with adaptations for the South African context by Sher, 1989). - Language awareness (metalinguistic) subtests: Subtests were selected from research which had been done successfully with three to six year olds, and cov- ered the areas of: * word consciousness (the concept that words are separate from the things they represent and that they are arbitrary in nature). R ep ro du ce d by S ab in et G at ew ay u nd er li ce nc e gr an te d by th e P ub lis he r (d at ed 2 01 2) 18 Debra Marais & Erna Alant Table 2. Language and cognitive functioning Subject Draw-a-man test age level PPVT scored at 6y age level norms (*) TMT scored at 6.0 6.2y age level norms:· Average stanine score Π A 5,3 yrs below average 4.1 Β 4,9 yrs above average 4,5 C 6,0 yrs average 5,5 D 6,0 yrs above average 5,6 Ε 6,9 yrs above average 5,1 F 6,3 yrs above average 4,3 (*) T-score interpretation where a score of 40-60 is average for 6 year olds. [] Stanine score: 5=average, standard deviation of 1,96. Table 3. Rating of Literacy Socialisation Environment Subject Literacy artifacts Ratings* Literacy events Rating* A Good exposure to books and maga- zines. Parents academically orien- tated and interested in overseas lit- erature. Lots of education toys and books. Bliss symbols books. Good Often looks at books and magazines. Parents and older sister spend a lot of time reading with him and he often draws and writes "letters" to friends. Uses and reads Bliss. Good Β Good exposure to reading and writ- ing materials. Beginner reader's books. Good Enjoys "reading" with much use of pic- tures and memory. Draws and "writes letters" regularly. Good C Good exposure to education books and beginner reader series. He en- joys "Spot" series (Otto) Good Both parents are teachers and spend time reading with him. He is involved with compiling shopping lists, signing his name in cards and "writing let- ters". Good I D Good exposure to books, writing materials, little table and chairs, children's encyclopaedia and be- ginners reading book. Good Lost interest in reading after head in- jury. She makes extensive use of pic- tures to assist recognition of items, and "writes letters" and enjoys draw- ing. Good I 1 1 Ε Good exposure to books, writing materials and sound and flash cards which her mother made to help her learn to read. Good Excellent exposure. Mother is highly motivated and has very high expecta- tions for her. She spends a lot of time teaching analyses and synthesis of phonemes. The subject can read a recipe and go shopping. Good F Adequate exposure to writing ma- terials and books and magazines. Adequate Parents do not have high education level and spend little time on reading and writing with the subject. He does write letters to friends, looks up TV programmes himself and reads begin- ner readers occasionally. Adequate The South African Journal of Communication Disorders, Vol. 41, 1994 R ep ro du ce d by S ab in et G at ew ay u nd er li ce nc e gr an te d by th e P ub lis he r (d at ed 2 01 2) The Development of Precursors to Literacy in Mentally Disabled Children 19 tion) were plotted using norms for 6-0 to 6-2 years. All s u b j e c t s attained scores which were adequate for this age level, and are therefore on a par with a six year old age level. (See Table 2 for scores.) Since l a n g u a g e a n d c o g n i t i v e functioning m e t the criteria, e n v i r o n m e n t a l factors n e e d e d to be considered, as these play a large role in forming preliteracy a w a r e - ness of print. Literacy socialization i.e., the role literacy artifacts and events play in developing literacy, was assessed according to the home and school environments and case history using checklists during the interview with the parents, and also according to the subject's print aware- ness in the print awareness subtest. All the parents were cooperative and enthusiastic during the interview and gave detailed information about the subject's back- ground and exposure to print. All parents seemed mo- tivated to assist their child in attaining his or her po- tential and had done all within their power to provide normal, and in most cases, exceptionally good exposure to literacy artifacts and events. According to the rating given from results of the checklists (see Table 3), only subject F obtained a rating of 'adequate', with all the other subjects rated as 'good' environments for foster- ing literacy. The print awareness subtest (Figure 1) assessed book- handling skills and situation dependent print (which assesses knowledge of brand names and names of high personal interest) to determine the subject's familiar- ity with the conventions of purposes of print. All subjects obtained scores between 86% and 100% for book-handling skills and handled books correctly, showing some knowledge of what print is used for as well as how it is used. Situation dependent print was well developed in three subjects, however, subject D was unsure of several items and subjects A and C scored below 50%. (See Figure 1.) It would seem that all subjects have language and cognitive levels which are above a five year level, with the majority on approximately a six year level, except for subject A. Their exposure to literacy artifacts and events is adequate, and in many cases exceptionally good. Most subjects also displayed good knowledge of the purpose and conventions of print (print awareness), though situation dependent print was not well devel- oped in some subjects. Tne final factor to consider is that of language awareness or metalinguistic ability. A profile of age equivalent scores for the five sub- jects who completed the language awareness subtests is given in Figure 2. The youngest subject (subject A) had little comprehension of the various tasks and gave many guessing and perseverative responses. He was unable to complete the battery and his results are excluded from the presentation of the results for the language aware- ness subtests. Further discussion is available in Marais, (1991.) From the age equivalent profile in Figure 2 it is clear that more than half the scores are on a four year level and below, with some scores even below a three year level. This is in sharp contrast to the language and cognitive abilities which are all above a five year age level. Let us consider the results of the subtests indi- vidually. The word consciousness test was completed success- fully by all five subjects, and all met the criteria of 80%, which determined mastery of the skill. Two subjects (B and F) fell between the norms for three and four year olds, while the other three obtained scores of 100% which is above a four year level. The sentence analysis.subtest (segmenting sentences into words) proved particularly difficult for the subjects, despite the opportunity this task afforded for learning. Only subject Ε had mastered this skill, with subject F on a three to four year level. A comparison of the scores for sentence analysis with the scores obtained with nor- mal three to five year olds is presented in Figure 3. 100 80 £ 60 40 20 Ι- Ε A Β C D S U B J E C T SITUATION D E P E N D E N T P R I N T BOOK HANDLING SKILLS Figure 1. Scores for print awareness tests C3) ( 4 ) G) ( 6 ) ( 7 W o r d c o n s c i o u s n e s s S e n t e n c e o n o l y s i s R h y m e W o r d o n o l y s i s U s e o f c o n v e n t i o n a l s y l l a b l e b o u n d a r i e s Β c D Ε m e J - H > A G E E Q U I V A L E N T IN Y E A R S Figure 2. Profile of age equivalent functioning on the metalinguistic test battery. Die Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kommunikasieafwykings, Vol. 41, 1994 R ep ro du ce d by S ab in et G at ew ay u nd er li ce nc e gr an te d by th e P ub lis he r (d at ed 2 01 2) 20 The results for the word analysis subtest (segmenta- tion of bisyllabic words) are compared with results ob- tained with normal three to six year olds in Figure 4. The three oldest subjects achieved scores of 100% which places them on a six year old level. Subject C scored on a thrge to four year level and subject Β on a level below three years. The literature from which the task was drawn (Fox & Routh, 1975) found that most children made use of conventional syllable boundaries to break up the wgrds, which was also the case for subjects C, D and E, who scored 100% for this task (see Figure 2). Subject F, however, segmented 7/8 of the stimuli by giv- ing only the initial phoneme which reflects ability to analyse words on a sub-syllable level, but not sensitiv- ity to syllabic boundaries. The rhyme subtest, (Figure 2) which assesses phono- logical awareness, had a criteria of 90% to determine mastery of the skill. Only subject Ε met the criteria, with subjects B, C and F on a four year level and sub- ject g below a three year level. DISCUSSION The results of this research project support the hy- pethesis that metalinguistic (or language awareness) abilities in mentally handicapped children do not nec- essarily develop spontaneously as they do with normal X ο 3 ο U J ο: Ο ο cη π - - Χ - / ζ , Χ C D B F — S c o r e s o b t a i n e d w i t h n o r m a l 3 t o 5 y e a r o l d s i > 4 5 6 A G E IN Y E A R S Figure 3. Comparison of scores for sentence analy- sis with normal 3 to 5 year olds. A X ο c Ο 6 t- X I ° 4 U J a: Ο u η t/> 2 χ χ S c o r e s o b t a i n e d w i t h n o r m a l 3 t o 6 y e a r o l d s 4 5 6 A G E IN Y E A R S Figure 4. Comparison of scores for word analysis with normal 3 to 6 year olds. Debra Marais & Erna Alant children, which is also the case with learning disabil- ity. The fact that these language awareness skills are lacking, makes it plausible that the difficulty many mentally handicapped children experience in learning to read could be contributed, at least in part, to inad- equate metalinguistic skills. Many mentally handi- capped people derive benefit from training in other metacognitive skills. This makes it seem possible that this p o p u l a t i o n could benefit from t r a i n i n g in metalinguistic skills. Word segmentation skills were well developed in three subjects, i.e., on a six to seven year old level. These abilities contrasted sharply with poor sentence segmen- tation abilities in all but one of the subjects. Poor per- formance on this task was shown despite the nature of the task which gave much opportunity for learning to take place (Van Kleeck et al., 1987). One subject even gave responses which broke phrases up at sub-word boundaries, and others gave perseverative responses after the sentence had been broken up into two or three phrases. Three of the five subjects yielded scores which fell below scores attained by three year olds. Thus the awareness of the word as the basic unit of speech was clearly not well established. The discrepancy found between word and sentence analysis abilities in mentally handicapped children con- trasts sharply with results obtained for the same two tasks in normal children. The research from which the tasks were drawn (Fox & Routh, 1975; Smith & Tager- Flusberg, 1982) found such close correlations between these two abilities that they postulated that the same cognitive process underlies both skills. Some could ar- gue that this difference between mentally handicapped and normal children is merely another reflection of the differences between the two populations, and that com- parisons between them are of little value. However, if the factor of reading instruction is introduced into the discussion, another possibility is raised. All the chil- dren who obtained high scores of word segmentation had received formal reading instruction, much of which focusses on word and phonemic analysis. They made use of word analysis and synthesis skills throughout the testing, and seemed proud of this ability wliich they had mastered. It could be the case that these high scores were a reflection of training in isolated metalinguistic skills, rather than a reflection of development of metalinguistic abilities. Since some learning hald taken place, despite the discrete nature of the skills, this again strengthens the case raised in the first sectibn that mentally handicapped children can benefit from train- ing in metalinguistic skills. A last point to consider with regard to sentence analy- sis abilities is the strong correlation that has been found between the ability to segment sentence into words and reading performance. Evans et al., (1979) and McNich (1974 in Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987) and Tunmer et al., (1984) found awareness of aural word boundaries to be a significant predictor of early reading achieve- ment. This ability was poorly developed in all but one of the subjects. Subject E, who had mastered this skill (see Figure 4), was also the only subject who was func- tionally literate. Thus it would seem that awareness of aural word boundaries had a similar correlation with reading performance in the mentally handicapped popu- lation as well. The South African Journal of Communication Disorders, Vol. 41, 1994 R ep ro du ce d by S ab in et G at ew ay u nd er li ce nc e gr an te d by th e P ub lis he r (d at ed 2 01 2) The Development of Precursors to Literacy in Mentally Disabled Children 21 CONCLUSION The mentally handicapped children used in this study displayed inadequate and incomplete development of the metalinguistic precursors to literacy which were inves- tigated, despite these children having language abili- ties comparable to a six year old age level, good literacy socialisation environments and receiving formal read- ing instruction. Trends which were noted in all sub- jects could be indicative that the difficulties uncovered here are difficulties that many mentally handicapped children experience. This metalinguistic deficit could be due to the difficulty that many mentally handicapped children have with meta-cognitive abilities, and could also be a contributing factor to the difficulty that this population experiences with reading acquisition. More research using larger sample groups is needed to es- tablish this. It is also possible that reading acquisition could be enhanced by training metalinguistic skills which are valuable for reading, since splinter skills had been developed in some of the subjects. Since training these skills has become part of the speech pathologist's role in intervention with language disabled children (Van Kleeck & Schuele, 1987), speech pathologists may need to play a role in training metalinguistic skills in the mentally handicapped population as well, in order to improve literacy in this population. REFERENCES Berger, R.S. & Reid, D.K. (1989). 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Die Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Kommunikasieafwykings, Vol. 41, 1994 R ep ro du ce d by S ab in et G at ew ay u nd er li ce nc e gr an te d by th e P ub lis he r (d at ed 2 01 2) V ^ u m m u i m i c a i i u i m A I D S FOR PEOPLE WHO CANNOT SPEAK DUAL DISPLAYS - o n e for t h e user & o n e for t h e p e r s o n t h e y a r e s p e a k i n g t o SINGLE SWITCH - plug-in single s w i t c h e s for s c a n o p e r a t i o n M E M O R Y - store f r e q u e n t l y u s e d phrases K E Y B O A R D - splash-proof a n d either Q W E R T Y or A B C D E l a y o u t The SL35 LIGHTWRITER T h e L i g h t w r i t e r r a n g e o f a l t e r n a t i v e c o m m u n i c a t i o n a i d s a r e p o r t a b l e , l i g h t w e i g h t a n d e x t r e m e e a s y t o o p e r a t e . S i m p l y t y p e w h a t y o u w a n t t o s a y a n d t h e U ^ h f f i SlH s a y I t Τ ο Γ Τ ο ω ^ ^ b ' e ^ ° V Q r i e t y ° f S i n 9 ' e S W i t C h e S " ^ ™ w ^ o a r e L L i n h ! l i ! ! r r S ? 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