The effects of enhanced conversational recast on the learning of aspect markers in Cantonese-speaking children with developmental language disorder : an early efficacy study

Abstract

Empirical evidence from five early efficacy studies showed that Enhanced Conversational Recast (ECR) could improve grammatical morpheme learning in English-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Positive findings of the ECR were replicated in a feasibility study on aspect marker learning in Cantonese-speaking typically-developing children (Hau, 2019). Aspect markers are grammatical morphemes that are problematic for children with language deficits. This early efficacy study served as an extension to Hau’s (2019) study and evaluated the efficacy of the ECR on the learning of aspect markers in Cantonese preschool children with DLD. Adopting a within-participant design with single baseline and control item, twelve ECR training sessions with 288 recasts were provided over four weeks. The percentage use of the trained, the untrained and the control morphemes were probed throughout the training phase and at one-week follow-up. Two of the three children demonstrated medium gains in trained marker use in probes, relative to the control morpheme. Generalization to the untrained marker was also observed. One-week retention of the accuracy was evident with a slight increasing trend. Positive gains in this study suggest that the ECR is applicable to the intervention of Cantonese grammatical morphemes that are typologically different from their English counterparts.