Linguistic and Communicative Diversity in Inclusive Settings—Effects, Challenges, and Opportunities

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?

Yes

Thank you very much for the mostly positive evaluation. I give my corresponding response in the point-by-point response letter.

Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?

Can be improved

Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?

Can be improved

For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?

Can be improved

Is the article adequately referenced?

Yes

Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

Yes

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The work is overall good but for the improvement see the following comments.

Comments 1:

The study employed a quasi-experimental design to investigate the linguistic interactions between child pairs in both homogeneous (same language development level) and inclusive (mixed language development levels) settings.

Comment:

At this point it is recommended to highlight that the generalizations and results are specific to the selected samples not globally. The main reason is for different contexts and regions the results might be totally different and it would be challenging and even wrong generalization over the other languages.

Response 1:

Thank you for pointing this out. Therefore, I have inserted a corresponding paragraph for limitations (lines 393-415).

Comments 2:

The research aimed to analyze the linguistic utterances of children with typical age-appropriate language development (TLD) and those with developmental language disorder (DLD).

Comment:

It is recommended to mention any hypothesis of result for different types of utterance and data with different genres, style etc. Would be there any difference or similarities at all and why the current selected method and approach would be sufficient without examining any other type and comparing them to each other.

Response 2:

Thank you for your comment. I have provided additional explanations on this (lines 153-156, 158-159, 201-205).

Comments 3:

The specific objectives included examining the difficulties in linguistic utterances, the production of phonetic units, words, and sentences, and the dialog behavior characterized by turn-taking and imitation of linguistic markers.

Comment:

Note that all of these factors can vary in different context and situations and with students with different characteristics and maybe ability or disability. It would be good at least to mention such points to the reader and show the border view. Moreover, the specific objective is too general to me as a reader and I wonder what the authors are going to cover in such diverse dimension. The objectives must be more specific and to the point and covering the whole linguistics levels must be justified why ad how the study will be meaningful and reliable.

Response 3:

Thank you for your advice and assessment.

I have pointed out that the factors can vary in different contexts and situations, as well as among students with different characteristics and possibly abilities or disabilities (lines 402-415).

The legitimization for including all linguistic levels is that DLD often manifests across all levels. To ensure comparability between children with DLD in inclusive groups and those in non-inclusive groups, the entire linguistic spectrum must be examined.

Comments 4:

Data collection involved 15-minute playful settings where child pairs were given a joint planning and construction task, encouraging linguistic-communicative collaboration. The interactions were videotaped, and the linguistic components were transcribed using the Conversation Analytic Transcription System 2 (GAT 2). The analysis focused on various linguistic criteria, including phonetics, phonology, lexicon, semantics, morphology, and syntax, allowing for a comprehensive examination of the children's dialogue behavior and language modeling.

Comment:

Why only 15 minutes and what is the base for such decision? Would it be sufficient by considering language errors and mistakes within a time frame of 15 minutes?

Response 4:

Fifteen minutes were appropriate for the interactive task of the child pairs to make the duration manageable for the children. Additionally, 15 minutes were sufficient for the evaluation process, as enough linguistic material was generated through the interactive task. This made it possible to determine clear trends regarding linguistic abilities or difficulties between the groups (TLD and DLD). The components of the utterances (phones, words, sentences, turns) were also in the high multi-digit range, allowing for meaningful language corpus analyses. Only for the mutual adoption of linguistic models were 15 minutes relatively short. Therefore, there were few model adoptions, but they still provided significant results in the micro-sequences.

Comments 5:

The sample consisted of 48 primary school children aged between 6 years and 7 years, selected from a school in Germany with integrated classes for students with language and communication needs. The children were familiar with one another from various pedagogical settings. The selection criteria for child pairs included:

    Pairs with both children having TLD.

    Pairs with both children having DLD.

    Pairs with one child having TLD and the other having DLD.

The sample was intentionally kept small to facilitate both quantitative language corpus analysis and qualitative conversation analysis, although the latter was not the focus of this article. The children were selected based on their familiarity with each other and the absence of extraordinary linguistic dominance or significant speech inhibition.

Comment:

The gender and sex of the children should be clear and mentioned.

Response 5:

Thank you for your comment. I have listed the gender of the children in the sample (lines 211-221).

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: There are styles which to me need a native check

Response:

I have revised the wording in certain sections of the text.

5. Additional clarifications

I have adjusted the citations and bibliography to follow APA style.

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?

Yes

Thank you very much for the positive evaluation. I give my corresponding response in the point-by-point response letter.

Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?

Yes

Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?

Yes

For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?

Yes

Is the article adequately referenced?

Can be improved

Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

Yes

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1:

This article is very interesting and well-written. The topic it addresses yields results that can practically benefit educators. It was easy to read and follow the flow of ideas. I don’t have any specific comments, as I didn’t identify any areas needing revision.

Comment:

The only suggestion I can make for improvement is that lines 23-25 are unnecessary and could be deleted, with the article beginning directly at line 27.

Response 1:

Thank you for your suggestion. However, the two sentences following the chapter heading "1. Introduction" (lines 23-26) should be maintained to provide a brief overview of the three subsequent subchapters.

Comments 2:

Additionally, it would be beneficial to include a brief subheading discussing Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research.

Response 2:

Thank you also for this suggestion. I have included a corresponding subheading with a brief explanation of the study's limitations and further research desiderata (lines 393-415) Additionally, I have revised the introductory text in Chapter 4 and added another subheading (lines 360-362).

Comments 3:

At the beginning of the article, it would also be helpful to add a clear paragraph on the significance of this study and how it contributes to academic research and education.

Response 3:

Thank you for your recommendation. Therefore, I have inserted a paragraph on this topic (lines 128-134).

Comments 4:

The literature cited is relatively recent, but I would recommend replacing any sources dated before 2010 with more up-to-date references, as there have been newer studies in this field.

Response 4:

Thank you for the tip. I have largely replaced the literature published before 2010 with more recent publications. Only three sources are original sources and cannot be replaced with newer publications (see Dietz, 2009; Papušek, 2008; Selting et al., 2009).

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: English language fine. No issues detected.

Response:
I am pleased that the quality of English language is considered appropriate.

5. Additional clarifications

I have adjusted the citations and bibliography to follow APA style.

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?

Yes

Thank you very much for the mostly positive evaluation. I give my corresponding response in the point-by-point response letter.

Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?

Can be improved

Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?

Yes

For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?

Can be improved

Is the article adequately referenced?

Yes

Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

Can be improved

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1:

A brief summary

Diversity is said to have a positive impact on learning, but the extent of this effect has not been thoroughly investigated. The authors analyzed the linguistic features of children’s conversations in four groups: TLD, DLD, TLD-Inclusive, and DLD-Inclusive. The results showed that heterogeneous groups demonstrated greater effectiveness in language use. Notably, this effect was particularly prominent in the DLD-Inclusive group.

This study is particularly intriguing as it explores various aspects of language observed in two homogeneous groups and two heterogeneous groups. It provides practical insights not only for linguists but also for educators working in schools, serving as a valuable reference for their practices...

Response 1:

Thank you for your positive feedback and your assessment of the importance of this study.

Comments 2:

General concept comments

The authors present the experimental results of the four groups clearly, using figures to enhance understanding. Below are my comments regarding children’s utterances:

Six indicators—phonetics, phonology, lexicon, semantics, morphology, and syntax—were used to measure linguistic difficulties. I would like to ask how the syntactic aspects were specifically measured. Additionally, will examples of children’s utterances be included in an appendix? If not, I would appreciate it if some examples could be incorporated into the main text.

Response 2:

I would be happy to explain how the syntactic aspects were measured.

In this study, a sentence was defined as a complete syntactic unit. A sentence could consist of one or more words with semantic meaning. Since this study involved oral communication, where sentence breaks and fragmentary constructions are common, these were counted as sentences if they were recognizable as intended and self-contained statements by the child.

In this study, syntactic difficulties were defined as deviations from the norms of German grammar, such as unusual word orders and fragmentary sentence constructions. Generally, by the age of 6, children acquire the verb positioning rules for different types of sentences in German (declarative, interrogative, subordinate clauses) as well as the valency rules that determine sentence completeness. Therefore, verb positioning errors and the omission of obligatory sentence parts were considered difficulties in this study. Sentence breaks resulting from interruptions by the other child, as well as colloquial and elliptical sentence fragments, which frequently occur in oral communication and often arise from referencing a previous speaking turn, were not considered syntactic difficulties.

Additionally, I have included in the appendix:

- Criteria for the language corpus analyses at the linguistic levels

- Excerpt of a sample transcript

Comments 3:

Specific comments

Here are the questions and comments regarding the experiment:

- The total number of participants in the experiment is 48. Could you provide the breakdown of participants for each group?

- In the figures, commas are used for numerical values (e.g., Figure 4: 4,58), while periods are used in the text (e.g., 4.58). Please ensure that all numerical values are consistently written using periods.

- Additionally, please include the units on the vertical axis of the figures.

- For the placement of figure titles, I believe they are typically positioned below the figures. Could you confirm this?

-Lastly, Appendix A and Appendix B are currently left blank.

Response 3:

Thank you for pointing this out.

-          I have provided the breakdown of participants for each group in the text (lines 211, 215-223)

-          I have ensured that all numerical values are consistently written using periods (figures 1 – 7).

-          I have included the units on the vertical axis of the figures (figures 1 – 7).

-          I have removed the titles from all figures, as they are now redundant with the units on the vertical axes (figures 1 – 7).

-          I have added an appendix.

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: The article is written in good English.

Point 2: I found some parts that became more readable when changing passive sentences to their active ones.

154: Focus was placed on the linguistic components of phonetics, phonology, lexicon, semantics, morphology, and syntax.

→The analysis focused on linguistic aspects including phonetics, phonology, lexicon, semantics, morphology, and syntax.

321: "Participated in" instead of "took part in" would be a more appropriate expression for an academic paper.

Response:

Thank you for your suggestions.
I have converted some passive sentences to active ones (lines 158-162, 173-176, 178-181, 183-190, 194-198).

I have replaced the suggested term (lines 363-364).

5. Additional clarifications

I have adjusted the citations and bibliography to follow APA style.