Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39618046›Full record

Trial reportJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2025

Oral language intervention in the late primary school years is effective: evidence from a randomised control trial.

Rosanne Esposito, Arne Lervag, Charles Hulme

Abstract readMulticenter StudyRandomized Controlled Trial
In one paragraph

Trial report in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Rosanne EspositoUniversity College London, London, UK.
Arne LervagUniversity of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.ORCID 0000-0002-5660-6621
Charles HulmeUniversity of Oxford, Oxford, UK.ORCID 0000-0001-9499-5958

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundOral language skills provide the foundation for formal education, and children may require language support over an extended period of time to maximise their education potential. Most work on language intervention, however, has focussed on the preschool or early school years. Here, we describe the development and evaluation of the Oral Language for Literacy Intervention (OLLI) programme which is designed to support children with weak language skills in the later primary school years.

methodsWe conducted a randomised control trial in 33 schools (50 classrooms). The language skills of all 8-9 year-old children in each participating classroom (n = 1,423) were assessed using an automated app (LanguageScreen). The six children with the weakest LanguageScreen scores within each classroom (n = 296) were randomly allocated to the intervention (n = 148) or control group (n = 148). The children in the intervention group received the OLLI programme delivered in individual and small group sessions over 20 weeks. Children in the control group received their typical teaching.

resultsChildren receiving the OLLI programme made significantly larger gains than children in the control group on a preregistered latent variable reflecting standardised measures of oral language ability (d = 0.38) and on a measure of their written expression (d = 0.42).

conclusionsThese findings have important implications for improving educational attainment in children in the late primary school years. The OLLI programme is designed to be deliverable at scale and is of relatively low cost.

Indexed as

Language Development DisordersLanguage TherapyOutcome Assessment, Health CareChildFemaleHumansMaleSchoolseducationLanguageprimary school interventionRCT

Identifiers

PMID39618046
PMCPMC12062848

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.