Final Draft

Kourtney Kramer

English 1050

Rough Draft

Speech Therapy for Young Offenders

What if someone told you, that because of the way your child spoke, made him or her a factor of becoming a young offender with multiple charges?  The fact that they may have had a small stutter or some kind of speech impediment makes them at risk for making bad decisions in the prime teens of their life.  The article that I chose for my analysis paper talks about the testing they have done to determine if young offenders were those with past speech issues.  They stated that around 50% of children and adolescents receiving services for a range of adjustment disorders (for example, behavior disturbances, anxiety disorders) actually display language impairments when specifically tested.

I do not think that the author did everything they could do to capture its readers. The first few pages are successful on teaching you about the situation to which young children with speech impediments are determined to grow up like.  The author is more about logos and the facts of the situation.  Logos is very much the spot where the tests are passed back and forth to only show the facts.  This is ineffective because there is nothing to tie the reader in.  It is hard to read a paper if the author does not know how successfully pull in their readers and to keep them interested.

The article is although, effective in showing its readers that there is hope for those young offenders who are being held and still are continuing to suffer from speech or language disabilities.  It reminds us that the hat unmet developmental difficulties can be addressed in order to maximize their opportunities for gainful participation in society and to avert the adoption of an ongoing adult ‘lifestyle’ associated with persistent crime.

As far as statistics go, the article was very good at showing you many examples but how am I supposed to understand if I don’t know the content in the article?  When I look at this article I think of someone printing off a bunch of numbers that have no meaning to them.  My biggest question was whether or not the author was trying to help solve the problem or to simply show to more people who aren’t aware that there is this lurking problem of children with speech impediments and not living up to their full potential in life.

It is also effective in showing you that the way kids are treated at a young age does have a very large impact on the choices they make through out their lives.  The more confident students go on to be successful and the less confidant students get held back at a disadvantage.  This in turn reduces the likelihood of school engagement, thus lessening the access that high- risk young people have to the protective effects of academic achievement. Beitchman et al. (1999) suggest that communication difficulties tend to be misinterpreted as non-compliance and conduct problems in the classroom environment.

            This article is trying to show that speech and language therapy intervention can be effectively given to youth by teams who can test each individual.  They preform multiple tests to rate where each individual is at on an educational level. They aim towards identifying any language and communication difficulties in the young people, to coordinate with their personal needs, and to evaluate any change in language or communication post-intervention.

            A decision was made to target the young people on the ISSP.  The ISSP is the most rigorous non-custodial intervention available for young offenders.  It targets the most active repeat young offenders and those who commit the most serious crimes.  They ISSP program aims to reduce the frequency and seriousness of offending in the target groups they are testing and to tackle the underlying needs of offenders which give rise to offending, with particular emphasis on education and training. To meet the criteria for ISSP, the young people will either be prolific offenders who have committed at least ten crimes over the past year and who have already received other community sentences through the English courts, or they will have committed a crime that, if committed by an adult, would have carried a custodial sentence

of 10 years or more.

Teens who usually engage in criminal activity, in the author’s point of view, are linked to having speech disabilities as well as learning difficulties.  They say that the tie between these two is they are functioning two years below their peer group putting them in a disadvantage of those around them.  The idea of them being left behind creates the opportunity for anger and frustration to build up and put them in the position to be a young offender. Studies of offenders’ speaking and listening skills have used populations of young people in different countries over various age ranges. This means that studies are not directly compatible, but a consensus figure of 50–60% of young people who are involved in offending having speech, language and communication needs is emerging. 

             In my opinion, if we work hard to help improve children’s speech disabilities while they are still young, rather than waiting until it weighs in on their lives and starts having an effect on their social life, we can help better them.  A lot of the solutions to these problems are simple, yet we are not giving them all the effort we can give.  If each person realized the impact they had on a child’s social behaviors then we could all do our part in helping them have a fighting chance.  The article suggests the strengthening of the educational support and I personally think that this is the best solution.  Over all the impact that this article has is pretty important, the author is very creditable and trusting because of the educational level you can detect through the words and test they preform.

Writing Proposal

Reflection

          In order to prepare for my writing proposal I made sure to very carefully read my article and to use proper annotating skills to keep information in my head.  I made sure to high light the important facts in my article and to high light in another color the words that i didnt understand completely so that I could go back and define them and re-read the sentence with a new understanding of the word.  These are the two techniques I will always use when reading because I tend to skim over things and not take the time to learn them in a new definition or in my own words.

          My greatest weakness is finding new words to use.  I've said this before and I will say it again, I have a very hard time not repeating words that I may over use in all my papers.  I try to look new words up but I usually feel like I'm not sounding like myself and I feel as though it's important to write like you in your papers.  My strengths would have to be solving the issue.  I feel as though I have a lot of ideas that I would love to see into play with helping young kids with developing better talking skils.  I really like to build up peoples confidence and that to me is very important on helping someone improve! 

          Im not completely sure if I'm understanding how to write a correct thesis as well as following good format.  I feel confident in the way I am writing but would like to be reasurred about your definition of a thesis and how we can write a proper one.  In other words, how to start our papers the right way!

         Hopefully now when I go to write my real paper I will have all this new found information to go off of and to build up on.  Its helped me prepare a lot and its getting my mind thinking already about the negatives and positives of my article and the message that my author is trying to send out.

         I'm not going to lie, the article I picked made this article a little more difficult than I would have liked it.  It didnt have a lot of things to go off of, it had a lot of statistics and graphs which is good but not a lot of words to back themselves up with and thats what I needed in order to argue against some of their points.  It is a little frustrating to write a paper about what we will be writing our paper on just because it seems repetitive but I can see the way we can benefit from it as well. 

         This was a lot like just a recap of what we learned in English 1010 which is fine! It is nice to have a little recap and refreshing when we have that break between school.  Ive learned a lot between English 1010 and chapters 1-3 about rhetoric writing and argument papers and how to better read and write papers! Which is very benefitial to the things we will continue doing and in our daily lives!

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Kourtney Kramer

English 1050

Writing Proposal

            The research to finding the best solution for kids growing up with learning and speech disabilities is still developing.  In my article they did a recent study that showed that most young offenders were those who struggled with speech and language impairment during the early years of their life.  My purpose is to remove the stereotype that kids who are raised with speech impediments are destined to become young offenders.

            This article is trying to show that speech and language therapy intervention can be effectively given to youth by teams who can test each individual.  They preform multiple tests to rate where each individual is at on an educational level. Teens who usually engage in criminal activity, in the authors point of view, is linked to having speech disabilities as well as learning difficulties.  They say that the tie between these two is they are functioning two years below their peer group putting them in a disadvantage of those around them.  The idea of them being left behind creates the opportunity for anger and frustration to build up and put them in the position to be a young offender.   

            The article also mentions the importance of peers and family in the lives of those who are struggling with speech and language disabilities.  Palikara er al. (2009) suggests that “good family relationships may also be positive in helping children with speech and language therapy to cope with secondary education, although many young people who become involved in criminal activity have little to no family support.”  One of the most common reasons for children being raised with speech disabilities is because of emotional trauma or serious events that happen in a child’s life.  Things that happen to the parents or the family have effect on the children even if we don’t know it.

            The thing that frustrates me the most is the statement that, “boys with early language development problems were significantly at risk of teenage antisocial behaviors.” stated by Smart et al. (2003).  The assumption they are making is huge and climactic for those who are not as social as the people surrounding them.  There is always the choice of each individual to live the life that they chose, whether to go out of their comfort zone and working to improve any disabilities they may have or rather, sitting back and letting your disability become a hurdle you chose not to jump over.  It all depends on the way that the teen or child handles the challenges they are given to decide how their future will play out. You can give them hardships and they can either concur it or let it concur them.

            I want to argue that you can prevent kids with speech impediments from becoming young offenders in tomorrow’s society.  Rather than working to fix their impairment down the road when negative things have already came into play in their lives.  Why try and fix the problem after it’s already taken a toll on the rising generations when we can work harder on preventing and fixing it before hand.  I also want to prove that there are ways to work with the youth to improve their disadvantages and encourage others to include those that may not feel as comfortable in a social environment because of their disabilities.  The simple solution to this is improving the educational support for children with specific language impairments.  Raising the one on one time with students who seem to need the specialized attention to help in advancing their schooling and the experience they have.  It’s important to create a safe environment for student so that their confidence can be built up and help prepare them for becoming more social for later on in life.  When in a safe environment the student will be able to open up and feel more comfortable with speaking with those around them.  A way to better their disability is giving them opportunities to talk, publicly and one on one.  Not necessarily in front of large crowds but small groups who will encourage them and be patient with the struggles they may have as they try to express themselves. 

            In my opinion, if we work hard to help improve children’s speech disabilities while they are still young, rather than waiting until it weighs in on their lives and starts having an effect on their social life, we can help better them.  Giving them a brighter future and more chances to succeed rather than fall into the stereotype of becoming a young offender.

English 1050

Kourtney Kramer
English 1050 Intro

          As you know, my name is Kourtney and I am not your typical student.  I come from a family of six kids and I am the youngest!  At times it can be pretty crazy, especially with the siblings that I have, but everyday I am thankful for the people that I am surrounded by!  All growing up my parents told me I was a different child, in a good way, because I actually have a love for school and learning! As far as I can remember I have enjoyed school projects, writing papers, and really loved my math homework! Math was always the subject that clicked for me the most.  I am not a fan of science or history but you hand me a math test and honestly, if I know what I am doing on the test, I might get a little giddy! So after graduating and being able to start college classes I am very delighted to be in an English and Math class to make my brain think again! What I hope to get from this class is a better technique of writing papers and learning how to read articles.  I really enjoy writing and learning new things but i have a hard time putting things together correctly and using words that actually make me sound smart! I actually hope to learn a lot from this class and I am excited to start a new adventure!