This study reports descriptive findings regarding the scaffolding strategies used by an experienced practitioner during a shared book reading session with a student who uses augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Specific scaffolding strategies are described and, in addition, the level of semantic complexity targeted by the practitioner…

Children with autism have poor pretend play abilities, which greatly affects their social skill development. This intervention technique, using an adult partner, describes how a guided story and role-play format enhanced abilities of pretence and the understanding of social roles in a ten-year-old, verbal boy with autism. By having an everyday…

Language impairments are often associated with problems in educational attainments and in acquiring literacy, but speech therapy services to school-aged children are not universally available. If teachers are able to reliably identify those children whose language skills place them at risk, then the specialist services offered by speech and…

This article explores the training needs in speech and language of teachers and other early years educators in education settings. Results from the interviews demonstrate that practitioners have clear ideas about preferred training formats and they specifically want more training in identifying children with communication difficulties and…

The present study explores the characteristics and concerns of a group of mothers of young people with a history of specific language impairment (SLI). Altogether, 52 young people and their mothers participated. Psychometric tests were used to assess mothers' cognitive and literacy performance and socio-economic status was also recorded. Maternal…

Eight pre-schools took part in offsite and onsite speech and language training to improve their interaction skills with children and learn some group language activities. An evaluation was undertaken where practitioners at one pre-school were videoed running a language activity before and after training. The video was analysed to assess change in…

A tool was devised to improve spoken syntax through manipulation of graphic symbols. The participant, a French-speaking 11-year-old girl with general learning disability, learned to produce subject-verb-object (SVOn) sentences and transform them into a subject-object-verb (SOpV) structure in which the object becomes pronominal in a preverbal…

Children with cerebral palsy often have speech, language and communication difficulties that affect their access to social and educational activities. Speech and language therapy to improve the intelligibility of the speech of children with cerebral palsy has long been advocated, but there is a dearth of research investigating therapy…

Questionnaires elicited information from speech and language therapists (SLTs) working in Scotland about individuals they had treated with Electropalatography (EPG) between 1993 and 2003. The results showed that the majority of the group (n = 60) who had received EPG therapy during this period were school-age children with either functional…

Although most children seem to love music, our understanding of the role it plays in facilitating speech and language learning is limited, as is research validating its efficacy in the clinical setting. The purpose of this study was to examine how singing affects children's quick incidental learning (QUIL) of novel vocabulary terms. Sixteen…

The literacy abilities of 11-year old children with specific language impairment (SLI) were investigated through comparing subgroups with current expressive-only language impairment (E-SLI, n 30), current combined expressive and receptive language impairment (ER-SLI, n 32) and a history of now-resolved language impairment (Resolved-SLI, n 28). The…

This study provides preliminary indications of the performance of typically developing children with English as an additional language (EAL) on the British Picture Vocabulary Scales II [BPVS II]. One-hundred and sixty-five children aged four to nine years took part in the study, 69 monolingual English speakers and 96 with EAL. The results indicate…

Several factors have been shown to influence inclusion of children with special educational needs. This paper reports on findings from a questionnaire investigating training, specialist knowledge, confidence, attitudes and beliefs of the Reception class, Year 1, and Year 2 teachers of a cohort of children with a preschool diagnosis of moderate or…

This study compared the language behaviours of parents of toddlers with language delay (LD) and language of parents of typically developing toddlers (LN). Results indicate that parents of children with a language delay and children with normal language produced comparable amounts of linguistic input, but differed on some qualitative measures.…

This article reviews the nature and function of recasts, a well-documented way of responding to young children. The paper challenges the definition of recast and argues that it is too broad a category to be useful, either for theories of language development or for practice. In particular, various forms of recast have featured in intervention…