Production and comprehension of ‘wh’ questions and passives

Four children (age 11-13 years) with severe receptive and expressive specific language impairment (SLI) received Shape Coding therapy aiming to improve their comprehension and production of passives and ‘wh’ questions. The Shape Coding system uses shapes, colours and a system of arrows to teach grammatical rules.  A time-series design established baseline pre-therapy measures of comprehension and production of both passives and ‘wh’ questions. All participants made progress with passives and this was significant in three of the four cases. Comprehension and production of ‘wh’ questions also improved in all participants, although this did not always reach statistical significance. The results indicate that meta-syntactic therapy of grammatical rules, capitalising on visual strengths, can improve both comprehension and production in secondary age children with severe persistent SLI.

Ebbels, S & van der Lely, H. (2001). Meta-syntactic therapy using visual coding for children with severe persistent SLI. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 36(supplement), 345-350