EXPERIENCE LANGUAGE: AN AUTISTIC CASE

A technique on the language experience approach (LEA) that seems to be useful for children with little appropriate oral language The language experience approach (LEA) to teaching reading is an approach developed in the 1940’s and expanded in the 1970’s by Van Allen (Aukerman 1971). This approach, which uses the children’s own language for teaching them to read, has not only survived for some forty years but is increasing in popularity and is expanding. Originally language experience was used most often with primary children but more recently has been recommended for use with older elementary children, adult non-readers, and readers who are learning English as a second language (Hittleman 1983; Shepherd 1977). In this article the use of a modification of LEA called &dquo;experience language&dquo; with an autistic-like person is detailed. The approach is called experience language (EL) rather than language experience because meaningful experiences form the basis for evoking the language needed for speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The emphasis is on any and all communicative potential that can be squeezed from or planned into both informal and/or structured experiences