Effectiveness of intervention with visual templates targeting tense and plural agreement in copula and auxiliary structures in school-aged children with complex needs: a pilot study.

Effectiveness of intervention with visual templates targeting tense and plural agreement in copula and auxiliary structures in school-aged children with complex needs: a pilot study. Clin Linguist Phon. 2018 Jul 26;:1-16 Authors: Tobin LM, Ebbels SH Abstract This pilot study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a school-based intervention using visual strategies for improving accurate use of auxiliary and copula marking in singular and plural, past and present tense by students with moderate learning disability and complex needs. Eleven students, aged 10-14 years, in a specialist school based in the UK, participated in the study. A within participants design was used which included testing at baseline, pre- and post-intervention to consider progress with intervention as compared with progress during a baseline period of similar length. The experimental intervention consisted of eight, bi-weekly, 20 minute sessions, over a four week period, in small groups, in a classroom setting. Half of the participants focused on the auxiliary and half on the copula, but all were tested on both. Techniques included the use of visual templates and rules (the Shape CodingTM system) to support explicit instruction. Eight participants made greater progress during the intervention term than during the baseline term and this was significant at a group level (d = 0.92). A comparison of progress to zero was not significant during the baseline period ...
Source: Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Clin Linguist Phon Source Type: research