This paper examines the repair skills of three groups of 7 to 11-year old children:
1) children with Pragmatic Language Impairments (the PLIgroup); 2) children with
Specific Language Impairments with no pragmatic difficulties (the SLI group); 3)
children with normally developing communication skills (the mainstream group). The
data comprise one-to-one interactions with a speech and language therapist, where
the participants are engaged in a task devised to provide multiple opportunities for
the initiation of repair The research also included a six-week period of therapy
focusing on pragmatic skills for the children with PLI. Repair skills were compared
pre-and post-intervention. Initially, both the mainstream and SLI groups achievedfar
greater task success than the group with PLI, whose poor performance was largely
attributable to their tendency not to initiate repair After the intervention period
however, this group showed marked improvement (both in initiating repair and in task
success). This reveals their potential to develop pragmatic skills that they have
not spontaneously acquired if they are explicitly taught them.
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