Final Draft and Review

Kourtney Kramer

Debra Reece

English 1050

Final 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.

Even though my grades may not show it, I have actually learned  a lot this semester.  I have also learned a lot on what not to do but I think thats important to learn your faults along with your strengths because if you didnt know where you were weak you wouldnt ever know how to improve.  I think thats the main thing I learned this semester.  Yeah I know its supposed to be off the curriculum but I mainly just learned things about myself.  I learned that I only know how to write an arguement paper.  I dont know how to do anything else and a lot of times I had to go back and re-write my papers because I was writing them the wrong way and had no clue because thats all Ive ever writen before.  I learned that I am not very good with quoting sources. I dont think I could count on two hands how many times I have been taught to quote sources and authors and still to this day Im 100% sure I do it wrong.  I learned that if Im not writing about something that I am passionate about then I probably will not give that paper all of my effort because I need to understand what Im talking about in order to put together a great paper.  My main goal is, when I have to retake this class and by the looks of my grade Im going to have to, to prove to myself that I can do better.  I can take what I think is pretty good and improve that even more so that I can become the great writer I have always wanted to be.  My goal is to improve on my weakness' and show myself that I can work harder, and that I can do better.