Child Language Teaching and

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Education practitioner-led intervention to facilitate language learning in young

children: An effectiveness study
Jane Hutchinson and Judy Clegg
Child Language Teaching and Therapy 2011 27: 151 originally published online 6 April 2011
DOI: 10.1177/0265659010397232

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Article

Child Language Teaching and Therapy

Education practitioner-led
27(2) 151–164
© The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0265659010397232
language learning in young clt.sagepub.com

children: An effectiveness study

Jane Hutchinson
Leicester City Special Needs Teaching Service, UK

Judy Clegg
University of Sheffield, UK

Abstract
In the UK there is much concern about the educational progress of children from areas of significant
social disadvantage entering primary school with impoverished language skills. These children
are not routinely referred to speech and language therapy services and therefore education
practitioners in schools deliver intervention to facilitate their language learning. The evidence base
to support these interventions is small and more needs to be known about their effectiveness.
However, evaluating such interventions in an educational context can be challenging due to limited
opportunities and resources. The study evaluated small-group language intervention for Key Stage
1 children with impoverished language delivered by trained education practitioners in schools.
Children receiving the language intervention were compared to a matched comparison group
not receiving the intervention. Baselines of receptive and expressive language ability were taken
pre-intervention and post-intervention using standardized language assessments. The intervention
consisted of eight sessions delivered over eight weeks by trained education practitioners. The
children in the intervention group made significant gains in their expressive language compared to
the comparison group in the length and complexity of their utterances. Neither the intervention
group nor the comparison group made any gains in their receptive language. This effectiveness study
showed that small-group language intervention for children with impoverished language delivered by
trained education practitioners in schools is effective in facilitating children’s expressive language. It
is proposed that education practitioners would benefit from more knowledge of children’s speech,
language and communication development and training in how to assess and measure these skills
in young children appropriately in a school context.

Corresponding author:
Judy Clegg, Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield, 31 Claremont Crescent, Sheffield,
S10 2TA, UK
Email: j.clegg@sheffield.ac.uk

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152 Child Language Teaching and Therapy 27(2)

Keywords
language delay, small-group language intervention, schools, education practitioner, inter-agency
collaboration, evidence-based practice

I  Introduction
In the UK, there is currently much concern about the speech, language and communication devel-
opment of pre-school-age and primary-school-age children who attend schools in significant areas
of social disadvantage (Locke et al., 2002; Clegg and Ginsborg, 2006). Recent studies confirm that
a large proportion of children in areas of significant social disadvantage are entering school with
delayed language abilities as measured by standardized assessments (Locke et al., 2002; Locke and
Ginsborg, 2003). Delayed language is identified as a barrier to children’s learning and educational
attainment, and this is now recognized by the Department of Children, Schools and Families
(DCSF) through the publication of a range of educational documents (Department for Education
and Employment, 1997; Department for Education and Skills, 2001, 2006; Bercow, 2008).
In England, children entering compulsory education at approximately five years of age are
expected to have developed sufficient language skills to enable them to engage with the curriculum
and to manage their participation in the classroom and school. Research has identified that a large
proportion of children in areas of significant social disadvantage lack these skills (Locke et al.,
2002; Locke and Ginsborg, 2003; McIntosh et al., 2007), and this is now recognized by some Local
Education Authorities (LEAs) across England. In response to this, some LEAs are developing
approaches at the whole school level to improve the language skills of their primary-age pupils at
pre-school age and beyond (Sheffield Local Education Authority, 2010). This is categorized as a
tier 1 intervention where changes are made to the daily practice of schools to develop all children’s
speech, language and communication skills. Tier 2 interventions are targeted at children who have
delayed or impoverished language skills but are considered to be able to catch up with the help of
small-group additional interventions delivered by educational professionals with some training.
Tier 3 interventions are considered specialist and intensive and are delivered to children with state-
ments for special educational needs (SEN) for significant speech, language and communication
needs (SLCN) by specialist professionals such as speech and language therapists (SLTs) and speech
and language therapy assistants in conjunction and/or collaboration with schools.
Both tier 1 and tier 2 interventions offer much opportunity for collaboration between health /
speech and language therapy and education in designing and delivering intervention programmes that
can reach a large number of children with delayed or impoverished language. Collaboration is one of
the recommendations highlighted in the Bercow report (Bercow, 2008). Such intervention pro-
grammes are being delivered with some preliminary evaluation (Hobbs, 2006; Farmer and Griffiths,
2006; Dockrell et al., 2006) but much more research is needed to evaluate and evidence the progress
that children make through these interventions. A specific challenge for the educational professionals
involved in designing and delivering these interventions is how to evaluate the impact of the interven-
tions on the participating children as part of evidence-based practice. An evaluation of a tier 2 inter-
vention called the ‘Let’s Talk Programme’ offered an opportunity to do this and to understand the
challenges of completing such an evaluation in the context of an educational setting.

1  The Let’s Talk Programme

The ‘Let’s Talk Programme’ is a school-based language training programme for staff in schools in
a large city in the Midlands area of the UK. The programme was developed through inter-agency
collaboration between the city’s Children’s Community Health Services, the Children’s Speech

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Hutchinson and Clegg 153

and Language Therapy Service and the city’s Special Needs Teaching Service as part of the LEA.
It was offered to schools in the city for the first time in January 2003 by the Special Needs Teaching
Service. The aims of the programme are:

1. to raise school staff awareness of children’s speech, language and communication;

2. to develop staff confidence in meeting the needs of children with delayed and impoverished
language;
3. to develop school staff knowledge of strategies to facilitate and increase opportunities for
children’s language development;
4. to increase the ability of school staff to identify children with delayed and impoverished
language;
5. to increase school staff awareness of effective teacher talk; and
6. to improve staff knowledge of activities and resources for developing children’s language.

Schools commit to the training period of the Let’s Talk Programme, and the training is delivered
by the Let’s Talk Programme training team, which consists of a specialist language teacher, a lan-
guage support teacher and two speech and language therapists (SLTs).
Schools participating in the Let’s Talk Programme identify key staff (a member of the Senior
Management Team and either one or two teachers and/or teaching assistants). The training team
delivers language groups for children in the school, and the key school staff attend these language
groups to learn how to carry out these small-group interventions. The training includes learning
strategies to modify their own language to enable more effective communication, such as the use
of visual cues, pausing and modelling language. The trained school staff in each school then deliv-
ers subsequent language groups to children with support from the training team.
An independent service evaluation of the Let’s Talk Programme was completed by Wright and
Fleming (2009) and was jointly funded by the Children’s Community Health Services and the
city’s Special Needs Teaching Services. The evaluation focused on the perceptions of the school
and the school staff who participated in the training component of the Let’s Talk Programme.
Twelve of the 16 schools that participated in the training took part in the evaluation through com-
pletion of a questionnaire. Interviews were then conducted with 12 members of staff in eight of the
12 schools. The interviews gained the perspectives of staff in the following areas:

•• the rationale for implementing the programme;

•• how the programme was implemented in the school; and
•• the impact (as perceived by the schools and their staff) of the programme on the participat-
ing staff, children and school.

The evaluation identified that the Let’s Talk Programme was perceived to be a successful training
programme. Children were reported to make improvements in their vocabulary and communica-
tion through their participation in the language groups delivered by trained education practitioners.
However, yet to be determined is the impact on the children themselves in terms of the progress
they made or did not make in their language learning as a direct result of taking part in a language
group delivered by a trained education practitioner.

2  Small-group language interventions

Child-focused language interventions involve direct work with a child or group of children on one
or a set of language skills. Such skills can include:

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154 Child Language Teaching and Therapy 27(2)

•• perceived antecedents to language learning, such as facilitating attention and listening;

•• language learning skills themselves, such as learning new vocabulary, syntax constructions,
generating narratives; and/or
•• communication skills, such as turn taking.

Language groups are considered to have a positive impact on the language skills of children (Sadler
and Mogford-Bevan, 1997; Law and Sivyer, 2003; Dockrell et al., 2006) and can be delivered by a
SLT or by a less specialist professional trained in delivering small-group language intervention.
However, evaluation studies such as those mentioned above are only considered to contribute
emerging evidence for efficacy and effectiveness at the levels of case studies and controlled small-
cohort studies (Robey and Schultz, 1998; Pring, 2004; Cirrin and Gillam, 2008). Randomized
control trials (RCTs) are perceived as more robust measures of effectiveness and efficacy and, to
date, have focused on specialist and intensive intervention for primary-school-age children with
significant primary or specific language impairment, such as a recent RCT of the efficacy of SLT
intervention by Boyle et al. (2007).
In the research literature, there is conflicting evidence about the effectiveness of speech and
language interventions delivered by SLTs (direct intervention) compared to those delivered by oth-
ers such as SLT assistants, nursery-based staff and teaching assistants (indirect intervention or
consultancy-based intervention). Indirect intervention relies on training and/or support provided
by more specialist professionals and has been found to be an effective and cost-effective mode of
service delivery to primary-age children with primary language impairment when delivered at the
level of language groups as well as through individual intervention (Boyle et al., 2009; Dickson
et al., 2009). In contrast, Gallagher and Chiat (2009) in their comparison of direct intensive group
therapy intervention against a more consultancy nursery-based model of intervention for pre-
school-age children with specific language impairment found that the direct intervention was
found to be the most effective. These studies highlight that for indirect interventions to be success-
ful, it is the training of the staff delivering the interventions that is crucial.
To date, language intervention for children with delayed or impoverished language (rather than
primary or specific language impairment) who are not routinely referred to speech and language
therapy services, but are a concern for teachers and schools, has not been a focus of effectiveness
research. Such research is needed to identify the most effective models of intervention for these
children including whether small-group interventions delivered by trained education practitioners
can facilitate young children’s language learning. It is argued here that studies at the emerging
evidence levels do contribute significantly to the evidence base, particularly where practitioners
themselves collaborate with academics in establishing methods to conduct evidence-based practice
in real-life working practices.

3  Evidencing change in educational contexts

Evaluating interventions for all children with SLCN, including those with delayed and impover-
ished language, is a priority need as identified by the Bercow report (2008). Such evaluations are
an integral component of evidence-based practice and enable the practitioner to evaluate the qual-
ity of existing evidence and, importantly, to produce good quality evidence themselves. This is
challenging for practitioners delivering and evaluating interventions in real-life environments
rather than evaluations that have funding and allocated resources to meet criteria for rigorous
research conditions. However, such evaluations are needed and provide evidence as to the effec-
tiveness rather than the efficacy of interventions. Furthermore, they should aim to be rigorous in

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Hutchinson and Clegg 155

their methodology and meet the challenges of conducting evaluations in everyday school environ-
ments. This process also enables practitioners themselves to learn how to produce good quality
evidence, and this can inform and contribute to developments in their local service provision.
Evidencing change in educational rather than health contexts is not well documented.
Historically, evidence-based practice originated from the field of medicine (Sackett et al., 1996)
with a very strong emphasis on principles such as pharmacological treatment of disease states,
randomization, large sample sizes and the use of objective rather than behavioural measures. These
principles are not easily applied to the field of children with SLCN in speech and language therapy
services (Dodd, 2008; Joffe, 2008) and are, therefore, even more challenging in educational con-
texts (Parkinson and Humphrey, 2008). Understanding and measuring language learning in chil-
dren is a complex challenge particularly at the level of the education practitioner engaged in
evidence-based practice. This study highlights these challenges and attempts to provide further
discussion around the most appropriate but effective methods to evaluate small-group language
interventions delivered by trained education practitioners.
This study offered an opportunity to evaluate the Let’s Talk Programme by evidencing the
progress of the children participating in the language groups delivered by trained education practi-
tioners. The study asked the following research question: Does small-group intervention delivered
by trained education practitioners to key stage 1 children with delayed and impoverished language
facilitate their language learning?

II  Method
1  The intervention group
Twelve children in Key Stage 1 from one primary school were recruited to the evaluation of the
Let’s Talk Programme and formed two language intervention groups: six children in the first group
and six children in the second group. The mean age of the whole group (n = 12) was 6 years and 9
months and included nine males and three females. The children were identified and recruited to
the two intervention groups as specified by the Let’s Talk Programme. These were children who
teachers identified as having difficulties in listening and attention, following instructions, explain-
ing and describing events and finding the right words to say. For the purpose of this study, children
could be recruited to the intervention groups only if they were not receiving speech and language
therapy, had no additional learning or educational needs, and English was their first and only lan-
guage. This was to reduce the number of confounds in the study. The school the participants were
recruited from served a large, inner-city estate of predominantly local-authority accommodation.
In the school, 26% of children received free school meals, and this statistic was used as an indicator
of the degree of social deprivation in the area. The national average for children receiving free
school meals across schools in England is 15.9% (Department for Education, 2008).

2  The comparison group

The comparison group was recruited from a different primary school due to participate in the Let’s
Talk’ Programme at a later date. The comparison school also served a large, inner-city estate of
predominantly local authority accommodation. To minimize the confounding variables, a school
was used with a similar number of children receiving free school meals to the intervention school,
this being 29% of the school population. The teachers from the comparison school recruited 12
children to this delayed comparison group using exactly the same procedure as the intervention

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156 Child Language Teaching and Therapy 27(2)

school. The children were chosen from Key Stage 1 and had a mean age of 5 years and 2 months,
comprising four males and eight females.

3  Materials and procedure

a  Pre- and post-intervention language measures:  The study is an evaluation of the Let’s Talk
Programme that was funded by the LEA, who directed that quantitative data had to be collected.
This necessitated the use of standardized language assessments as pre- and post-intervention meas-
ures. In spite of the programme being a collaborative project between health / speech and language
therapy and education practitioners, there were ethical considerations regarding a SLT assessing
children who had not been referred to the speech and language therapy service. Therefore, the
language assessments in this study had to be carried out by the lead researcher, a specialist lan-
guage teacher. This restricted the range of assessments available to be employed in the study as any
assessments used had to be licensed for use by teachers. SLTs are qualified to use a much broader
range of language assessments than teachers are. Therefore the following two assessments were
chosen as the pre- and post-intervention language measures:

•• The Bus Story Test (Renfrew, 1997) was used as a measure of expressive language. The
assessment involves a child listening to a spoken narrative from the adult administering the
assessment; the narrative which describes a story of a bus. The spoken narrative is accom-
panied by pictures depicting the events that occur in the story. The child then verbally re-
tells the story, and the child’s narrative is scored for sentence length, the content of the
information given and the frequency of accurate subordinate clauses used as a measure of
grammatical complexity. The assessment was administered and scored according to the
directions in the manual with the children’s responses recorded onto an audio recorder and
then transcribed.
•• The British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS; Dunn et al., 1997) is a measure of receptive
vocabulary at the level of the single word. The target word is spoken aloud and the child
chooses the picture from a choice of four that corresponds to the target word. The assess-
ment was administered and scored according to the directions in the manual.

These two assessments were used pre- and post-intervention with the intervention group and the
comparison group. They were carried out individually for all the children in a quiet and distraction-
free room in both schools. Resource restrictions dictated that the lead researcher carried out the
assessments for all the children.
The baseline (pre-intervention) assessments were carried out during the first week of the sum-
mer term. The intervention group then received eight weekly language groups starting in the same
week that the baselines were taken. The comparison group received no intervention. In the ninth
week, the baseline (outcome) assessments were re-administered.

b  The intervention:  The 12 children recruited from the intervention school were randomly allo-
cated to two groups of six children. Each group formed a language intervention group and either
one teacher or one teaching assistant who had been trained in the Let’s Talk Programme carried out
the intervention for each language group. The intervention was delivered once a week over the
course of eight weeks. Each session lasted approximately 30 minutes. For a detailed description of
a language group session, see Appendix 1.

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Hutchinson and Clegg 157

Table 1  Mean standard scores of the intervention and comparison group gained on the BPVS at baseline
and outcome

Time Mean (s.d.) 95% confidence interval

Intervention (n = 12):
Baseline 88.67 (5.8) 84.86–92.48
Outcome 91.42 (6.8) 86.99–95.85
Comparison (n = 12):
Baseline 91.42 (6.9) 87.94–95.56
Outcome 93.17 (7.8) 88.74–97.60

III  Results
A repeated measures analyses was completed where the pre-scores and post-scores for the Bus
Story and the BPVS were compared across the two groups. Within this, the data from the BPVS
and the Bus Story (sentence length and information score) were analysed using a mixed design
analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a within-participant factor of time (pre-test vs. post-test), and
a between-participants factor of group (intervention vs. comparison).
The subordinate clause data from the Bus Story were analysed using two paired samples non-
parametric tests (Wilcoxon test), one for the intervention group and one for the delayed comparison
group. The Wilcoxon test was chosen as it is a non-parametric test and therefore most suitable for
analysis of the expressive language data.

1  Receptive vocabulary
The BPVS standard scores gained by the intervention group and the comparison group are shown
in Table 1. The mean baseline BPVS scores for both groups did not indicate delayed or impov-
erished language, despite the concerns raised about these children’s receptive language skills by
the schools. The main effect of time was moderate and significant but only at the p < 0.05 level
(F(1,22) = 5.919, p = .024). On average, for all the children (intervention and comparison group
combined), BPVS standard scores rose from 90.2 at baseline to 92.3 at outcome. The main effect
of group was not significant (F(1,22) = 0.8111, p = .378), indicating that, on average, both
groups performed similarly. The interaction between time and group was not significant either
(F(1,22) = 0.606, p = .445), indicating that any change from baseline to outcome was similar in
both groups.
The results obtained show no significant change between baseline and outcome in the inter-
vention group or the comparison group in receptive language scores as measured using the
BPVS.

2  Expressive language: Sentence length

The results of the analysis for sentence length on the Bus Story are shown in Table 2. There was a
difference of 3.08 between the mean baseline scores of the intervention and comparison group with
the intervention group scoring higher. This may have been an effect of the higher age of the inter-
vention group compared to the comparison group. The main effect of time was strong and highly

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158 Child Language Teaching and Therapy 27(2)

Table 2  Mean sentence length raw scores of the intervention and comparison group gained on the Bus
Story at baseline and outcome

Time Mean (s.d.) 95% confidence interval

Intervention (n = 12):
Baseline 7.63 (1.78) 6.28–8.99
Outcome 11.68 (3.55) 9.84–13.53
Comparison (n = 12):
Baseline 4.55 (2.65) 3.20–5.90
Outcome 5.68 (2.51) 3.84–7.53

Table 3  Mean information score from the Bus Story gained by the intervention group and the
comparison group at baseline and outcome

Time Mean (s.d.) 95% confidence interval

Intervention (n = 12):
Baseline 15.08 (5.25) 12.23–17.93
Outcome 20.08 (5.65) 17.46–22.71
Comparison (n = 12):
Baseline 9.00 (4.22) 6.15–11.85
Outcome 10.92 (2.57) 8.30–13.54

significant (F(1,22) = 20.174, p < .001). On average, for all the children (intervention and compari-
son group combined), sentence length rose from 6.1 words per sentence at baseline to 8.7 at out-
come. The main effect of group was strong and highly significant (F(1,22) = 23.414, p < .001). The
interaction between time and group was also significant (F(1,22) = 6.3888, p = .019). Analysis of
95% confidence intervals indicated that improvement from baseline to outcome was significant in
the intervention group but not in the comparison group.

3  Information score
The information scores from the Bus Story obtained at baseline and outcome by the intervention
group and the comparison group are shown in Table 3. The main effect of time was highly signifi-
cant (F(1,22) = 23.309, p < .001). The information score for all the children (intervention and
comparison group combined) rose from 12.04 at baseline to 15.5 at outcome. The main effect of
group was highly significant (F(1,22) = 19.496, p < .001). The interaction between time and group
was also significant (F(1,22) = 4.632, p = .043). Analysis of 95% confidence intervals indicated
that the change from baseline to outcome was significant only in the intervention group and not in
the comparison group.

4  Use of subordinate clauses

The analysis of the use of subordinate clauses on the Bus Story obtained at baseline and outcome
by the intervention group and the comparison group are shown in Table 4. Analysis using the

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Hutchinson and Clegg 159

Table 4  Use of subordinate clauses on the Bus Story at baseline and outcome in the intervention group
and the comparison group

Time Mean Minimum Maximum

Intervention (n = 12):
Baseline 0.33 .00 1.0
Outcome 1.50 .00 3.0
Comparison (n = 12):
Baseline 0.08 .00 1.0
Outcome 0.33 .00 2.0

Wilcoxon test showed that movement between the baseline and outcome assessments for the inter-
vention group on their use of subordinate clauses was significant (z = 2.345 p = .019). In compari-
son, movement between the first and second testing for the comparison group was not significant.
(z = 1.732 p = .083).
Three examples of the responses to the Bus Story are given for three children from the interven-
tion group. These examples illustrate the differences in information, sentence length and use of
subordinate clauses from baseline to outcome.
Child 1 (6:01 years at baseline)
Baseline: He whistled his whistle.
Outcome: The man blew the whistle and said ‘stop, stop, stop’.
Child 2 (5:09 years at baseline)
Baseline: Fell in the water.
Outcome: He gone down the big hill but then gone in the water.
Child 3 (6:04 years at baseline)
Pre: They pulled funny faces.
Post: They decided to pull funny faces at each other.

In summary, expressive language skills as measured using The Bus Story did show significant
changes between baseline and outcome in the intervention group but not in the comparison group.
Sentence length and the use of subordinate clauses both increased significantly in the intervention
group. The information score also increased significantly in the intervention group but not as
strongly as the sentence length and subordinate clause scores.

IV  Discussion
The overall aim of the study was to evaluate the Let’s Talk Programme by evidencing the progress
of the children participating in language intervention groups delivered by trained teachers and
teaching assistants. The research question posed by the study was whether small-group interven-
tion delivered by trained education practitioners can facilitate language learning in Key Stage 1
children with delayed and impoverished language. The results showed that the children who
received the small language group intervention made significant progress in areas of expressive
language, namely sentence length, quantity and quality of information and the use of subordinate
clauses in eight weekly sessions over eight weeks. In comparison, the children who received no
intervention did not make significant improvements in their expressive language. Interestingly, the

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160 Child Language Teaching and Therapy 27(2)

intervention did not impact on receptive vocabulary as measured by the BPVS. No significant
progress on the BPVS was measured in either the intervention group or the comparison group.
Therefore, the study showed that small-group intervention delivered by trained education practi-
tioners does facilitate improvements in young children’s language learning, specifically expressive
language skills.
The choice of methods to evidence potential change in language learning was constrained by the
LEA directive to employ standardized assessments as part of a quantitative approach to data col-
lection for school-age children in the LEA. This was then further constrained by the limited choice
of standardized language assessments, which are licensed for use by teachers.
The BPVS is a specific assessment of receptive vocabulary, and it is argued that no changes
were found in the intervention group because the intervention did not specifically target the learn-
ing of the vocabulary assessed by the BPVS. Therefore, as a measure of assessing language com-
prehension in an evaluation of language intervention, the BPVS is not an effective method of
evidencing change. It is possible that the language understanding of the children in the intervention
group did improve as a result of the intervention. There may well have been changes in antecedent
skills such as listening and memory or even understanding of specific syntax constructions. As the
BPVS only assesses single-word vocabulary knowledge, improvements in such skills remain
unknown. Interestingly, the use of the BPVS to measure receptive language in the children did not
confirm the concerns raised by the schools. The mean receptive language scores of both the inter-
vention and comparison groups as measured by the BPVS were within the typical range.
In contrast, the Bus Story enables the child to give an expressive narrative that is qualitative, and
as the intervention targeted expressive language skills then it is reasonably expected that any
changes could be detected by the Bus Story. The measure of sentence length provided by The Bus
Story proved to be an effective measure in this context. The team delivering the Let’s Talk
Programme noted that children experiencing impoverished language skills respond positively to
strategies designed to develop children’s expressive language such as modelling language (Wright
and Fleming, 2009). Re-modelling a child’s utterance into a complete sentence enables the child to
learn and practice the model and to then employ this in their everyday language.
Mecrow et al. (2010) in their exploratory trial of the effectiveness of an enhanced consultative
approach to delivering speech and language intervention in schools employed primary and second-
ary outcome measures. The secondary outcome measures were standardized speech and language
assessments. In contrast, the primary outcome measures were two specific speech and language
targets for each participating child. Each target was developmentally matched to a control target
that was not a focus of the intervention. This within-participant design enabled a much more spe-
cific evaluation of the intervention to be completed. Progress in the specific intervention and con-
trol targets for each child could then be compared with his or her performance on the pre- and
post-standardized assessments. In addition, the design also enabled multiple baselines of the inter-
vention and control targets to be taken, ensuring consistency in these behaviours. Interestingly, the
children showed improvements in their specific targets and in their performance on some of the
standardized measures. In contrast, Parsons et al. (2006) also employed this approach in teaching
new curriculum words to two children with Specific Language Impairment. The children both
showed significant improvements in their new word learning but did not show any gains on the
BPVS, which was used as a measure of single-word comprehension pre- and post the intervention.
Employing primary and secondary outcome measures as described above has much potential to
prove the effectiveness of language interventions as part of evidence-based practice. However,
designing individualized linguistic targets does require a high level of knowledge about children’s
speech and language development, which education practitioners do not routinely have.

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Hutchinson and Clegg 161

In this study, the very restricted selection of standardized assessment material licensed for use
by teachers became apparent. The complexity of assessing language and the high level of specific
skill and training required to do this is a significant issue facing education practitioners who are
attempting to deliver and evaluate language interventions. The pressure from LEAs to collect
quantitative data to support interventions presupposes the use of standardized assessments, but as
we have seen these are not specific to measuring the interventions offered. A true reflection of a
child’s language skills also requires observations in a range of natural settings along with informal
assessment activities. In spite of the wide-ranging skills of classroom teachers, the ability to con-
sider all these factors to allow an accurate assessment of children’s language skills is not part of
their skill set, and education practitioners need further training and support (Mroz, 2006).
In view of the importance of language skills for learning and educational attainment, an effec-
tive assessment process in schools would seem to be a valuable resource. A means of capturing
information obtained from informal language measures and observations would be beneficial.
Such a process may provide data requested by LEAs. It would also allow for the early identifica-
tion of speech and language and communication needs, the importance of which is highlighted in
the Bercow report (Bercow, 2008). Monitoring of interventions to support speech, language and
communication needs would also benefit from more holistic and functional methods of measuring
children’s language.

V  Methodological limitations
The study was undertaken by the first author in fulfilment of a MSc in Language and Communication
Impairment in Children. Therefore, there were no resources or funding allocated to this evaluation
and the study took place in schools in real-life working practice. As a result, there were several
important methodological limitations that need to be considered in interpreting the findings of the
study. The time interval between the baseline and outcome assessments was only eight weeks
which is usually considered too short a time to repeat a standardized assessment with any real reli-
ability. Additionally, a more controlled study design would be beneficial where appropriate base-
line measures could be repeated prior to the start of the intervention several times to establish a
reliable baseline and repeated immediately after the intervention but also three months later to see
if any change is consolidated after the intervention has finished.
The teachers in the two schools included in the study recruited the children to the language
groups as specified by the Let’s Talk Programme which aimed to increase the teachers’ skills in
identifying children’s language difficulties. A consequence of this recruitment process was that
there was a considerable age difference between the intervention group and the comparison group.
The mean age of the intervention group was 6.9 years while the comparison group was 5.2 years.
Age-related factors may have affected performance on the baseline and outcome measures such as
reduced attention in the younger comparison group, compared to the older intervention group.
Furthermore, the study would have been considerably strengthened by recruiting the delayed com-
parison group from the same school, rather than the second school. The intervention groups were
recruited from a school that had received the full Let’s Talk Programme. The programme included
whole school training and demonstrations of how to increase language opportunities in the classroom
for all school staff. The school from which the comparison group was taken had not yet participated
in the Let’s Talk Programme. The children in the intervention groups may have benefited from the
whole school aspects of the Let’s Talk Programme, as much as from the small-group work.
The lead researcher administered the baseline and outcome assessments to all the children and
there may have been some unintentional bias, as the researcher knew which children had or had not

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162 Child Language Teaching and Therapy 27(2)

participated in the intervention. Ideally, administration of assessments should be blinded, i.e., com-
pleted by someone independent to the study, although this does have significant resource implica-
tions in terms of staff time in schools.
The action of working with a small group of children on a regular basis rather than the activities
themselves may have been responsible for the positive results recorded in the intervention group.
An additional comparison group receiving similar, small-group work not specifically designed to
develop language skills would be very valuable in understanding the specificity of the intervention
to language learning

VI  Conclusions
Small-group language interventions delivered by trained education practitioners do facilitate lan-
guage learning in young children with delayed or impoverished language. However, this study
highlights some of the methodological issues in attempting to measure the effectiveness of inter-
vention in school settings. Within the educational context, qualitative methods of assessing and
measuring language change in children are needed in addition to standardized assessments of lan-
guage. Education practitioners would benefit from training and support to develop their skills in
working with children with speech, language and communication needs and to evidence the effec-
tiveness of their interventions.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the staff and children who participated in this study.

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Appendix 1  Detailed description of a language group session

The Let’s Talk programme is a whole school training package that aims to increase awareness of
speech, language and communication (SLC) in schools, increase identification of speech, language
and communication needs (SLCN) and increase the skills of teachers in providing strategies and
resources to support children with SLCN.
The programme was designed to address a range of both local and national agenda, for example
Every Child Matters (DES. 2003) and The Law Report (DfEE. 2000). The programme continues
to be adapted to address new education agenda as necessary, e.g. The Rose Review of Primary
Education (2009).
The programme is delivered in participating schools by a collaborative team of specialist teach-
ers of SLC and a SLT. Implementation of the programme is facilitated by the presence of a teacher
from the Let’s Talk team in the school for two days a week. Specific training is given in how to
deliver small language groups. This training involves the demonstration of small language groups
by a SLT and specialist language teacher to a key group of teachers and teaching assistants. These
trained observers then repeat language groups using the activities and strategies used in the
demonstrations.
Following an eight week, whole school focus on SLC, a school language policy is developed
along with an action plan detailing how the school is to continue the support and interventions after
the Let’s Talk team leave the school. Evaluation procedures are incorporated into the programme
design. These include pre and post questionnaires, interviews with teachers, teaching assistants and
children and the use of video evidence to measure change in practitioners.

Example of the structure of a language group on the Let’s Talk Programme

Group introductions Name stickers; group rules including listening
rules; outline of session using picture timetable
Group gel game Quick, fun, non-demanding. The aim is to relax
and focus the group
Activities to address listening / memory / Approximately 3 activities. These form the main
comprehension / expression focus of the session.
Plenary Summarising activities. This helps memory,
vocabulary, description and use of the past tense
Recording and planning Includes the collection of utterances to contribute
to assessment procedures

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