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Oral language enrichment in preschool improves children's language skills : A cluster randomised controlled trial
West, Gillian Lervåg, Arne Birchenough, Julia M. H. Korell, Caroline Rios Diaz, Mariela Duta, Mihaela Cripps, Denise Gardner, Rachel Fairhurst, Caroline Hulme, Charles
West, Gillian
Lervåg, Arne
Birchenough, Julia M. H.
Korell, Caroline
Rios Diaz, Mariela
Duta, Mihaela
Cripps, Denise
Gardner, Rachel
Fairhurst, Caroline
Hulme, Charles
Abstract
Background
Oral language skills provide the foundation for formal education, yet many children enter school with language weaknesses. This study evaluated the efficacy of a new language enrichment programme, the Nuffield Early Language Intervention—Preschool (NELI Preschool), delivered to children in the year before they enter formal education.
Methods
We conducted a preregistered cluster randomised controlled trial in 65 nursery schools in England (https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN29838552). NELI Preschool consists of a 20-week whole-class language enrichment programme delivered by a teacher each day for 20 min. In addition, children with the weakest language skills in each class are allocated to receive additional targeted support delivered by classroom assistants (whole-class + targeted). The language skills of all children (n = 1,586) in participating classrooms were assessed using the LanguageScreen automated app (https://oxedandassessment.com/languagescreen/). Settings were then randomly allocated to an intervention or control group. The children with the weakest language in each class (whole-class + targeted children n = 438), along with four randomly selected children in each class allocated to the whole-class only programme (n = 288) were individually tested on a range of language measures.
Results
Children receiving NELI Preschool made larger gains than children in the control group on an oral language latent variable (whole-class children d = .26; whole-class + targeted children d = .16).
Conclusions
This study provides good evidence that whole-class intervention delivered in preschool can produce educationally significant improvements in children's language skills. The intervention is scaleable and relatively low cost. These findings have important implications for educational and social policy.
Keywords
language, RCT, education, preschool, intervention
Date
2024
Type
Journal article
Journal
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Book
Volume
65
Issue
8
Page Range
1087-1097
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE)
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open
Notes
© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.