This is a disciplined and clearly-written account of an investigation into the links between early language development and literacy problems that is the culmination of over thirty years of research, and contains within it the germ of a solution. For all of that time, Professors Snowling and Hulme have taken a practical and controlled view of the issues involved in early literacy and have made significant discoveries, chief among them the link between problems with speech in early childhood and subsequent assessments of dyslexia. They have worked patiently and hard, with respect for the limitations of evidence and the constraints of research methods. I hope that all of the authors of this excellent book will forgive me for putting Maggie and Charles first - I declare a bias, indeed an interest, in a disinterested sense of the word, having followed the research since their first publication
In this book, they and their co-authors have set up random allocated controlled trials of teaching, provided by trained teaching assistants, designed to promote the development of spoken language and to tackle problems that put children at risk of failing to learn to read and write properly. Professor Snowling has described the organisation of the study, which involved 29 schools, as “a logistical nightmare”. However, she and her colleagues have woken up in bright sunshine, with statistically and educationally significant outcomes that are an important breakthrough, not only in literacy, but in the training and deployment of teaching assistants. At the York conference presenting the work, the authors were full of praise for the work of the assistants and quite rightly - this is the first fully documented account of what assistants can achieve, and for that alone is very important.
The two key programmes, phonology plus reading, and oral language, are described in great detail in the book and should be read by everyone concerned with early literacy. I have a couple of quibbles, the most important of which is the suggestion on p2 that “by the time children go to school, they typically have an oral vocabulary of 14,000 words”. As Professor Snowling and many others have shown great disparities in the pre-school language experience of children, it is impossible to know what is typical, or to put a figure on it.
The research was supported by a grant of £212k from the Nuffield Foundation. It has demonstrated that randomised controlled trials are possible in education, though to me this is still one criterion among many for evaluating research. Focus on the right groups of pupils, clear design and consistent monitoring of teaching techniques, and long term follow up are all just as important (technical paper here). This study followed pupils up after 15 months, which is good, though follow up to 11, as in the Clackmannanshire studies, should be undertaken if possible. There is no quick fix here, either real or implied - as with Reading Recovery, the social and intellectual conditions that are part of the cause of literacy problems are still in place once the intervention has finished. But life is short. This research is the best we have had to date in this area, and much better than most of that surrounding Reading Recovery.
Julia Carroll, Claudine Bowyer-Crane, Fiona Duff, Charles Hulme and Margaret Snowling: Developing Language and Literacy. Wiley-Blackwell, Nuffield Foundation, ISBN 978 0 4707 1185 9
