Strategies for Helping Students with Language Impairments Take Tests

How can you help your child or students that have Language Learning Disabilities to take tests?

These students have a hard time remembering the information even when he has studied and may have trouble expressing what he knows (especially in essays). This is an issue that many students face when test taking. This can easily lead to the student developing a lot of anxiety and "shutting-down" academically.

The following Strategies can be Helpful:  

• Crazy phrases: If your child has to remember a list of items in order, such as the planets in the solar system, help him come up with a silly sentence using the first letter of each item on the list. The following is an example many teachers use to help students remember the nine planets in order: My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. Otherwise known as: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
• Acronyms: When the order of the information does not matter, your child can take the first letters of each item on the list and try to form them into a word. For example, to help remember the systems of the body, the acronym “RED CRaNES” can be used:
  Reproductive
  Excretory
  Digestive
  Circulatory
  Respiratory
  a – (no system – place holder)
  Nervous Endocrine
  Skeletal
• Cartoons or pictures: If your child is a visual learner, it may help to make cartoons to illustrate concepts (e.g., history, science) or to draw small pictures to trigger his memory for vocabulary words.
• Word associations: You can help your child make connections to other information he knows by using the sounds or visual representations of words. For example, if he has to remember that the word “distinct” means “different or unmistakable,” you can help him find another word that sounds similar, such as “stink.” If something stinks, it is definitely different and unmistakable!