A CASE STUDY:The Effects Of Play-Based Linguistic Instruction On Autistic Children's Expressive Language Development

With the propelling of preschool inclusive education,more children with autism spectrum disorders(ASD)have been placed in the regular kindergarten classrooms.However,insufficient language expressions have impeded their communicative activities with normal children in such settings.Play,however,is the most essential learning method that interests children.It can simulate different occasions,arouse children's willingness to express,understand peers,language expressions actively and promote children's physical and psychological development.This study is grounded on the practices of 2014 Play-Based Curriculum Program in Jiangsu Province,choosing a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder as single subject to conduct play-based linguistic instructions in the inclusive kindergarten setting.In this study,edited Curriculum-Based Measurement(CBM)packages were used to dynamically testify the subject's expressive language development throughout the intervention and then to explore the effects of implementing play-based linguistic instructions.After three months' intensified intervention,the results showed that:(1)Play-based linguistic intervention has been proved efficacy on the subject child's expressive language development.And the effectiveness remained when the intervention revoked;(2)the subject child has increased the social interactions with peers.So was the relationship between them;(3)the subject child's participation in the linguistic activities has improved,which alleviated the teaching burdens;(4)the subject child could transfer his learning experience of linguistic classes to other activities,which accelerated the process of full inclusion in the kindergarten settings.Given the results from the intervention,targeting on the linguistic activities in the inclusive kindergarten settings,this study proposed the following suggestions:(1)in order to encourage students to participate in the activities,prepare diverse materials;(2)apply curriculum-based measurements to adjust the instructional strategies;(3)improve teachers' tutorials abilities to promote the inclusion.Language is a complex and dynamic system.This study was incomplete since it separated autistic children's expressive language ability from the whole language system.Further studies on autistic children's receptive language,pragmatic language abilities should follow up to supplement the overall language research.