Explicit and systematic narrative language instruction to improve language comprehension: a three-arm randomized controlled trial

The purpose of this three-arm randomized controlled trial was to explore the impact of multi-tiered explicit and systematic narrative language instruction on the language students are expected to understand and produce in the school setting (e.g., reading and writing). A sample of 210 kindergarten students were assigned to three conditions: treatment, active control, and no-treatment control. The treatment group received Tier 1, whole group contextualized oral narrative language instruction from their classroom teacher twice a week for 15-20 min over 14 weeks. Students who did not make adequate progress after one month of the large group instruction were assigned to receive additional 20-min Tier 2, small group narrative language intervention sessions, delivered by speech-language pathologists two times each week. The students assigned to the active control group participated in Tier 1 shared storybook reading instruction with their classroom teacher twice a week for 15-20 min. Students in the no-treatment control group participated in classroom activities that were in place at the outset of the school year. Narrative and expository language samples elicited at pretest and posttest were analyzed for several features of complex language. Results indicated that students in the contextualized narrative language group produced significantly more complex language with large effect sizes compared to the shared storybook treatment and no-treatment control groups. Additionally, gains in expository language were noted, indicating that the intervention generalized across discourse types. The findings from this study add to a meaningful corpus of research that supports the use of multi-tiered explicit and systematic contextualized narrative language instruction to increase the complexity of the language of young students, including those who are at risk for language learning difficulty.