Abstract

Purpose: This study is Phase One of a multi-phase research initiative. The purpose of this study was to examine how well a low-dose, dual oral narrative and expository language intervention delivered in a small group setting improved expressive and receptive oral narrative and expository language in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students who have been identified as having language disorder or emerging English academic language. Method: We administered a dynamic assessment of language to 325 kindergarten, first, and second grade students from two elementary schools in two school districts. The results of the dynamic assessment identified 61 students who had a language disorder or emerging English academic language. We randomly assigned those 61 students to a treatment or control group; however, 7 students were removed from the study due to incomplete data sets following the posttest phase. Students in the treatment group received small group oral narrative and expository language intervention two times per week over four weeks (eight 20-minute sessions). We administered narrative and expository assessments immediately prior to intervention to all students in the treatment group (n = 27) and the control group (n = 27). Those same measures were administered immediately following intervention to both groups. Results: We conducted a series of one-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs), using the pretest narrative retell as a covariate for each of the dependent variables. There were no significant differences between the treatment and control groups for any of the dependent variables. However, trends from means indicate that the treatment group was beginning to perform higher than their control-group peers at the conclusion of this Phase One study, suggesting that significant differences between groups may emerge in later phases. To maximize the efficiency of contextualized language intervention by alternating narrative and expository intervention procedures each week under realistic conditions, it is necessary to ascertain when two 20-minute sessions per week, which is the time that most speech-language pathologists dedicate to language intervention for their students, will yield significant results across both narrative and expository outcomes.

Degree

MS

College and Department

David O. McKay School of Education; Communication Disorders

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2023-06-12

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd12824

Keywords

oral language, expository, narrative, language intervention

Language

english

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