Effectiveness of teaching story grammar knowledge to pre-school children with language impairment. An exploratory study

Abstract

Narrative intervention is becoming a common feature in clinical treatment. However, there is a lack of research to support clinicians in their endeavour to provide effective and efficient intervention for children with narrative deficits. For the current study, 13 preschool children with language impairment (ages from 4;8 to 6;4) participated in a narrative intervention programme. Narrative intervention activities explicitly taught story grammar components. A mixed group and single-subject experimental design was used. Two measures of content were used to analyse children’s story productions: story information and episode level. As a group, children included more story information and produced more structurally complex stories following intervention. Single-subject data revealed that half the children showed statistically significant improvements for story information and episode level. Although the results of the study are mixed it is clear that the narrative productions of pre-school children with language impairment improve after narrative intervention. Clinically significant results are discussed along with directions for further research.