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Child Language Teaching and Therapy, Vol. 23, No. 1, 67-93 (2007)
DOI: 10.1191/0265659007072143
© 2007 SAGE Publications

Teaching grammar to school-aged children with specific language impairment using Shape Coding

Susan Ebbels

Moor House School, Oxted, Surrey, UK, ebbelss{at}moorhouseschool.co.uk

This paper describes an approach to teaching grammar which has been designed for school-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI). The approach uses shapes, colours and arrows to make the grammatical rules of English explicit. Evidence is presented which supports the use of this approach with older children in the areas of past tense morphology, comprehension of dative structures and comparative questions. I conclude that there is sufficient evidence that this kind of intervention can be effective with these older children. This challenges the current move to reduce direct intervention for school-aged children.

Key Words: intervention • grammar • school-aged children • specific language impairment

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S. H. Ebbels, H. K. J. van der Lely, and J. E. Dockrell
Intervention for Verb Argument Structure in Children With Persistent SLI: A Randomized Control Trial
J Speech Lang Hear Res, October 1, 2007; 50(5): 1330 - 1349.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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