'Colourful semantics' : its effects on Maltese children with developmental language disorder

Abstract

'Colourful Semantics' is an intervention programme originating in the United Kingdom that cues children to produce utterances using different colour cards. The purpose of this research was to determine whether an adaptation of this intervention programme to the local scenario would have any effect on the linguistic skills of Maltese children with developmental language of utterance (MLU), word order, use of function words and grammar. Since DLD each received four sessions of the meta-linguistic therapy programme. The results obtained by each child in the Language Assessment for Maltese Children (LAMC) before intervention were compared with the results of the same child following intervention. The findings showed an increase in scores on all the sub-tests in the LAMC standardised assessment and also in MLU, grammar, function words and word order, although increments were limited at times.