Compared with children who do not have language disorders, children with language disorders tend to

• A. Take more conversational turns
• B. Initiate topics and direct the flow of conversation more
• C. Ask fewer open-ended questions
• D. Initiate more indirect requests

Answer: (C)

Open-ended questions demand more language resources—vocabulary, syntax, and planning to produce a thoughtful, extended response. Children with language disorders often have difficulty with those skills, so they rely more on shorter utterances and yes/no or closed questions. This leads to asking fewer open-ended questions in conversation, which is a common pattern seen in language disorders. The other options describe greater or more proactive conversational participation, which isn’t typically characteristic of language disorders, so they don’t fit as well.