ABSTRACT
Language difficulties can affect children's ability to read and write. For most children, learning to communicate is something that happens naturally. However, for some children, something goes wrong. It's not always known why it happens, but it's more common than most people think. It has been estimated that over one million children in the UK have some kind of speech and language difficulty, which is equivalent to around one child in every classroom. These children need a lot of help extending their vocabulary, for example in school with subjects such as history and science, which have many specialist words. Some children have severe problems with grammar. For example, they might not be aware of the 'ed' marker at the end of a regular verb.
