Research and Development

At Moor House School we are very keen to develop the evidence base regarding methods which help young people with language impairments. Since February 2006 we have had a part-time Research and Development Coordinator, Susan Ebbels.

Susan and other staff  have carried out a number of projects over the years, some of which have been published or presented at conferences (see publications for further details and links). The majority of these projects have investigated the effectiveness of direct intervention for older children with primary language impairments. These studies are among a very few which have been published worldwide involving children over the age of 11 years.

Projects include:

• Effectiveness of "Shape Coding" therapy for children with grammatical difficulties (both comprehension and expression)
• Effectiveness of semantic therapy for children with word finding difficulties
• Effectiveness of therapy for inferencing difficulties
• Improving comprehension of Science vocabulary in the classroom
• Effectiveness of the overall therapy provision at Moor House School: changes in scores over time
• Analyses of the relationship between progress in language scores and academic scores
• Production of sentences involving different types of verbs change: a comparison of children with specific language impairment and typically developing children.
• Non-word repetition in adolescents with SLI.