Natural Language Processing and the Language‐Impaired

Abstract

There is a growing interest in using techniques of natural language processing to allow users to communicate with computer‐assisted learning software in relatively unconstrained language. It is, however, by no means clear as to what kinds of computer‐based learning activities might make best use of such user freedom. This paper describes some ideas that have arisen out of observations of simple language understanding software in use by various groups of hearing‐impaired, language‐impaired and unimpaired children. These ideas generally involve setting goals which make linguistic interaction meaningful and purposeful for the user.