A comparison of the effects of two treatments on vocabulary learning of children with language impairment

Abstract

This study compared the effectiveness of two treatment conditions, the Text Talk condition and the Storytelling condition on word learning in three Cantonese-speaking K3 children with language impairment (LI). A single-subject alternating treatments design with baseline was employed. Two different sets of words were taught under the two treatment conditions with individual instruction. Results suggested that the Text Talk condition was relatively more effective than the Storytelling condition in facilitating word learning in children with LI. The effects produced by the Text Talk condition were the most robust in the less demanding Word Picture Matching task while there were smaller but still obvious effects in the more demanding Meaning Recognition and Context Integration tasks, indicating modest effects of the treatment in increasing the depth of vocabulary knowledge. The Text Talk condition produced statistically significant summative gains in two children whereas the Storytelling condition produced statistically significant summative gains in one child. The findings provide some support for the adoption of the Text Talk over the Storytelling condition for children with LI; Storytelling also has the potential of promoting significant gains for children with a lesser degree of LI.