Does Enhanced Conversational Recast promote the learning of grammatical morphemes in Cantonese-speaking preschool children? Answers from a single-case experimental study

Abstract

Enhanced Conversational Recast (ECR) is an input-based grammatical intervention approach developed from research on statistical learning. Recent research reported evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ECR on the learning of grammatically obligatory morphemes in English-speaking preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD). This single-case experimental design study, which adopted a within-participant design with single baseline and control item, investigated the efficacy of ECR in promoting the learning of aspect markers in four Cantonese-speaking typically-developing preschool children. Two children demonstrated positive outcomes with the progressive aspect marker ‘gan2’ given 12 ECR training sessions within a mean dosage of 288. One of these children demonstrated statistically significant gains in the percentage of correct use in the probes. The lack of positive outcomes in the other two children on the earlier developing aspect marker ‘zo2’ and limitations of the study were discussed. With early evidence established in the typically developing children in this study, future research on Cantonese speaking children with DLD can be considered.