"Language skills are the foundation for literacy development and are fundamental to educational success," Professor Margaret Snowling
Read more on http://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2010/research/language-intervention/
This adds weight to the already irrefutable evidence that Smart talkers Pre-School groups are a fantastic opportunity for pre-school children.
Incidentally, Professor Snowling was one of my tutors at UCL.... just plain Dr Maggie then but still very impressive!
The York study looks really interesting. Just to clarify what you say about it adding weight - I may have misunderstood, but I didn't think Smart Talkers was the language programme being studied at York? Also their study was with preschoolers with delayed language/communication skills I think, while you aim your programme universally? Happy to be corrected on any of this if I've read wrong.
ReplyDeleteThank you, I should have expanded. The York study looked at attention, listening, vocabulary, narrative etc all of which we work on in our programmes. Although our Smart Talker range are for all children, we get fantastic results with children with delayed speech, language and communication. Smart talkers are run by Small Talk Speech and Language therapy and many of the groups are funded to be run with children with identified SLaC need. Others groups are for more able children to give them a boost before school.
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