For School - Based SLPs INTRODUCING AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH : STRUCTURE AND CLINICAL

H enry is an energetic 6-year-old boy wiUi fragile X syndrome (FXS). Physically he does not appear different from other children his age, though with a long face and fairly large eai s. Henry enjoys giving hugs and singing, but when he meets new people he becomes very quiet and avoids eye contact. Transitions are stressful for Henry, so his teachers pi ovide him witli a set schedule for each day and give him ample time to prepare for new activities. Mosl of Henry's utterances arc two to ihree words in length, with more advanced comprehension than expression. .Mthough in single words Henry's speech is intelligible, he lalks rapidly and is quite difficult to understand in conversational speech. He has difficulty^ responding to questions and quickly changes the topic to something of greater interest. Rachel is an 8-year-old girl with FXS. She enjoys talking about her favorite subjects, using sitnple sentences of up to eight words. Rachel will engage adulls and her friends in conversation, although it takes her a few seconds to initiate a topic and then she tends to stay on her own topic. Her third-grade teacher says she is coopeiative in school, but anxious about her performance, often seeking reassttrance about her work. Although Rachel is reading, she has diffictilt)' describing" the main ideas of what she reads and finds math, especially solving woid problems, very difficult