Linguistic pragmatics and language intervention strategies.
Teach kids to talk with purpose, not just perfect grammar.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wilkie et al. (1981) wrote a think-piece, not an experiment.
They asked: why do we keep drilling nouns and verbs when kids still can’t ask for a drink?
The paper maps how to flip language goals from perfect sentences to real-life talking.
What they found
The authors found nothing new to count.
Instead they argued: test if the child can start, end, and repair a conversation.
Teach words that get the child what they want right now, not flawless grammar.
How this fits with other research
Yoder et al. (1981) published the same plea the same year.
Both papers shout: stop isolated drills, start back-and-forth talk.
Forty years later Dudley et al. (2019) still measure syntax delays, showing we never fully switched.
The old call for pragmatics and the new data on syntax gaps sit side-by-side: we need both lenses.
Why it matters
Next time you write an ISP goal, add one pragmatic line.
Instead of “will use 3-word sentences,” try “will request missing toy from peer.”
You keep the syntax target, but now you also track if the kid actually gets the toy.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The recent research focus on pragmatics leads to the consideration of issues of language use that have fundamental practical implications for language assessment and intervention. Specifically, the pragmatic orientation suggests changes in the content of language assessments, by evaluating various communicative functions the child expresses, and modifications in the process of language assessment, by encouraging both the initiating and responding dimensions of the child's communicative behavior. Furthermore, the pragmatic focus suggests changes in the process of intervention. The primary goal of intervention becomes facilitation of generalized communicative functions for which syntactic structures and semantic content are only the tools. And the pragmatic framework suggests guidelines for what constitute appropriate reinforcers that sustain rather than interrupt communicative interactions.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1981 · doi:10.1007/BF01531342