OWLS Author Observes Trends in Comprehension and Expression of Oral Language in Learning Disabled Children

By Elizabeth Carrow-Woolfolk, OWLS Author & Kathleen Williams, Director, Product Development

The Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS) is a theoretically based, individually administered assessment of receptive and expressive (oral and written) language for children ages 3 through 21 years. OWLS consists of three co-normed scales:

1. Listening Comprehension
2. Oral Expression and
3. Written Expression.

OWLS Listening Comprehension (LC) and Oral Expression (OE) Scales were administered to 40 children classified as learning disabled in the area of reading. The age range of the group was 6 to 13 years with a median age of 10. The results were studied by Dr. Elizabeth Carrow-Woolfolk, test author, for the purpose of determining trends in the comprehension and expression of oral language by children with identified problems in reading—and of recommending possible research projects using the OWLS with children exhibiting reading problems.

The author made the following observations:

1. Twelve or 30% of the children had also been identified with speech/language disorders.
2. Fifteen (54% of the children who had not been identified as having speech/language disorders) scored at or below one standard deviation (SD) from the mean on either LC or OE or both.
3. Of the 28 children who were not originally assessed as having speech/language disorders, 17 (or 68%) scored higher on LC (a measure of receptive language) than OE (a measure of expressive language). Five of the 17 had significantly higher scores (at the .05 level).
4. LC and OE scores on the 12 children who were identified with speech/language disorders appeared to have no difference in the direction of their score discrepancies, although all the children had some discrepancy between receptive and expressive language.

From this small sample of children having difficulties in the area of reading, two observations can be made about oral language performance. First, even though only 12 of the 40 children had also been identified for services for speech/language problems, a total of 27 of them scored more than one SD below the mean standard score on a measure of receptive and expressive language (OWLS).

Second, there appears to be a pattern of lower performance in expressive language than receptive language among children identified as learning disabled in reading. (Note: In the standardization sample, differences between scores on the scales is a normal distribution with equal number of children scoring higher in LC or OE at every age.)

In view of the percentage of learning disabled children with apparent, undiscovered language impairment, the test author suggests further research in the area of oral language abilities with children who have reading difficulties. It is particularly important to discover if children with reading difficulties show a significantly greater impairment in Oral Expression than Listening Comprehension. It is suggested that children with reading problems be evaluated using an expressive language test as well as a receptive language test. Using a receptive test only (such as a test of vocabulary) might cause an examiner to miss the language impairment.

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