A Vocabulary Intervention Program for Older Students

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) frequently have difficulties with word learning and understanding vocabulary. This can significantly impact social interactions, daily activities, and academic progress. Although there is literature providing a rationale for targeting word learning in such children, there is little evidence for the effectiveness of specific interventions in this area for children with identified DLD and particularly for older children. The purpose of this study was to establish whether direct one-to-one intervention for children with DLD over 9 years of age leads to improved abilities to identify, comprehend, define, and use nouns and verbs targeted in intervention compared with non-targeted control items and whether the participants’ rating of their own knowledge of the words changes with intervention.