For as long as I can remember, my son has had problems expressing himself on paper and orally. His sytax and sentence structure are downright confusing at times. As a result, he often sounds like a much younger child though he works at or above grade level most of the time. Has anyone else had this experience?
Re: Word salad and add children
Both my sons did this, one much more than the other. Some of us learn language more quickly and more fluently than others. Some of us need more time. My younger son now in 11th grade still makes mistakes in verb tenses and still often misspeaks, mispronounces and misconstructs his sentences.
It does make him sound younger than his 17 years but fortunately it doesn’t upset him too much. What does help is when he’s very focused and works to speak slowly and gather his thoughts fully before speaking.
The problems ADD folks have in organizing their lives often carries over into their written language, whether or not they have trouble with reading or have generally good verbal abilities.
Practice with predictable patterns and structure can be a big help - though since that generally means insisting on artificial pattenrs and structures, it can be tedious and annoying and the student (and sometimes the teacher) rebels against having to force writing into a certain structure. In the long run, though, if the student has had practice forcing the words into prescribed syntax & sentence structure patterns, then s/he is able to choose from that menu and expand on it. The alternative is, generally, writing in a very confused fashion.