Skip to main content

The Lively Study

This study investigates language intervention in the early years.

About this project

We're conducting a research project to evaluate the effectiveness of language interventions for pre-school children in nursery contexts with significant language difficulties.

This innovative research is funded by the Heather van der Lely Foundation. It aims to evaluate the effectiveness of language interventions for children with language difficulties by randomly allocating schools to one of two groups:

  • Building Early Sentences Therapy (BEST) was developed by Newcastle University in partnership with speech and language therapists and has promising early signs of effectiveness.
  • The Derbyshire Language Scheme (DLS) has been used widely for many years. The study will use an adapted version of this scheme.

People