BackgroundOral language skills in the preschool and early school years are critical to educational success and provide the foundations for the later development of reading comprehension.MethodsIn a randomized controlled trial, 180 children from 15 UK nursery schools (n = 12 from each setting; Mage = 4;0) were randomly allocated to receive a 30-week oral language intervention or to a waiting control group. Children in the intervention group received 30 weeks of oral language intervention, beginning in nursery (preschool), in three group sessions per week, continuing with daily sessions on transition to Reception class (pre-Year 1). The intervention was delivered by nursery staff and teaching assistants trained and supported by the research team. Following screening, children were assessed preintervention, following completion of the intervention and after a 6-month delay.ResultsChildren in the intervention group showed significantly better performance on measures of oral language and spoken narrative skills than children in the waiting control group immediately after the 30 week intervention and after a 6 month delay. Gains in word-level literacy skills were weaker, though clear improvements were observed on measures of phonological awareness. Importantly, improvements in oral language skills generalized to a standardized measure of reading comprehension at maintenance test.ConclusionsEarly intervention for children with oral language difficulties is effective and can successfully support the skills, which underpin reading comprehension.

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Background: While practitioners are increasingly asked to be mindful of the evidence-base of intervention programmes, evidence from rigorous trials for the effectiveness of interventions that promote oral language abilities in the early years is sparse. Aims: This study evaluates the effectiveness of a language intervention programme for children identified as having poor oral language skills in preschool classes. Methods & Procedures: A randomised controlled trial was carried out in 13 UK nursery schools. In each nursery, eight children (N = 104, mean age = 3 years 11 months) with the poorest performance on standardised language measures were selected to take part. All but one child was randomly allocated to either an intervention (N = 52) or a waiting control group (N = 51). The intervention group received a 15-week oral language programme in addition to their standard nursery curriculum. The programme was delivered by trained teaching assistants and aimed to foster vocabulary knowledge, narrative and listening skills. Outcomes & Results: Initial results revealed significant differences between the intervention and control group on measures of taught vocabulary. No group differences were found on any standardised language measure; however there were gains of moderate effect size in listening comprehension. Conclusions & Implications: The study suggests that an intervention, of moderate duration and intensity, for small groups of preschool children successfully builds vocabulary knowledge, but does not generalize to non-taught areas of language. The findings strike a note of caution about implementing language interventions of moderate duration in preschool settings. The findings also highlight the importance of including a control group in intervention studies.

This research evaluated possible sources of individual differences in early explicit, smaller segment phonological awareness. In particular, the unique contributions of oral vocabulary and alphabetic knowledge to phonemic awareness acquisition were examined across the first year of school. A total of 57 participants were tested in kindergarten (mean age 5 years, 8 months) and again 1 year later midway through Grade 1. Results revealed that oral vocabulary and alphabetic knowledge were correlated with concurrent larger segment phonological awareness and phonemic blending in kindergarten whereas oral vocabulary was the only measure that predicted unique variance in phonemic awareness into Grade 1. Further, this pattern of results was most pronounced for analytic (segmenting), as opposed to synthetic (blending), phonemic awareness. These results highlight the importance of different component processes to explicit, smaller segment awareness depending upon the developmental period under study and also accentuate the need to separate analytic from synthetic phonemic awareness in literacy research.

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