Article Review: Efficacy of Language Intervention in the Early Years - Essay Example

Six children from each school acted as the control while the rest provided the experimental samples exposed to the intervention program. The 30 week intervention program that involved use of multi-sensory techniques was administered by teaching assistants of the respective nursery schools. These teaching assistants were trained and gave the progress of the children. The aim of the intervention program was to improve the vocabulary of the children, develop their narrative skills, build their confidence in speaking and encouraging active listening.

The researchers adopted an experimental study design where assessment measures were used to determine language skills among the children. Screening tests measured the grammatical and vocabulary development while post, mid and pre maintenance tests measured the children’s language skills, phonological awareness, literacy skills and general cognitive skills, a method regarded by Carroll, Bowyer-Crane, Duff, Hulme and Snowling (2011) as appropriate for evidence-based evaluation of teaching methods’ effectiveness.

Findings From this experimental study, the researchers found out that intervention positively impacted on phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge, an observation similarly made by Munro, Lee and Baker (2008). However, this could not be generalized to skills in word-level literacy probably because it was introduced 10 weeks to the end of the program. The results support the findings by Pollard-Durodola et al. (2011) indicating that the intervention program led to improved spoken narrative and oral language skills, each of which was maintained in the post administration period of six months.

This therefore implies that oral intervention could be useful in educational circles in. This essay stresses that the use of a combination of individual and group intervention by the teaching assistants provided the children with greater opportunity to understand the vocabulary instructions. However, this study has a limitation on its inability to evaluate the advantage associated with commencement of these intervention programs earlier than at school entry with the optimal timing for introduction of this intervention remaining unknown.

Nonetheless, it supports the fact that oral language interventions in schools could be effectively delivered by trained school staff, an important step in developing cost effective and evidence-based interventions as supported by Savage, Carless and Erten. From this experimental study, the researchers found out that intervention positively impacted on phoneme awareness and letter-sound knowledge, an observation similarly made by Munro, Lee and Baker. However, this could not be generalized to skills in word-level literacy probably because it was introduced 10 weeks to the end of the program.

The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between early childhood intervention and effect of such children’s learning abilities. The findings support the fact that in early childhood, oral language skills could be promoted with its effects generalized to standardized tests in reading comprehension and oral language skills. In spite of the significance of this study, it would be important to extend it over a longer period particularly in cases of persistent learning impairments.