​Proficiency in oral language skills is needed for a student to progress through the general education curriculum successfully.  In the early grades students must be able to comprehend directions, concepts, and educational content that is presented.  Especially in the early grades, instruction is verbal.  A child that struggles to process the language of education also struggles to learn the information that is required to progress to the next level.  Oral language skills are the foundation skills on which reading and writing skills are built.  Children with articulation skills often have more difficulty learning to read than peers with typically developing articulation.  In addition, the understanding and correct use of morphology, i.e., plurals, possessives, prefixes, suffixes, and verb tense markers also impact comprehension, the ability to learn vocabulary, and writing skills.  Word knowledge and syntactic knowledge present an even greater challenge for many students.  It is generally accepted that to meet the demands of the curriculum, students generally have to learn more than 1000 words per year.  This is just the tip of the iceberg!  Understanding metaphors such as "tip of the iceberg" and other figurative language is also a must.  It is also required that students take all of these skills, process them simultaneously, and then fluently express their knowledge. Truly, the building of oral language skills is important and  it is imperative that we work together to ensure strong oral language skills in all students. That is why speech-language therapy is important for children that demonstrate speech-language deficits. 

Most of this information is from The Educational Relevance of Communication Disorders by Lissa Power-deFur, PhD, CCC-SLP.  The information was viewed at: https://leader.pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/leader.FTR3.15102010.20 on July 8, 2020.  

If you would like to read more about this subject, please read the article mentioned above.   Feel free to contact me with any questions.