Acquisition of adjectives and adverbs in sentences written by hearing impaired and aphasic children.
Model sentences plus token rewards quickly boost correct adjective and adverb use in deaf or aphasic writers.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four students who were deaf or had aphasia wrote sentences each day. The teacher showed model sentences on a projector. Kids earned tokens for using adjectives and adverbs correctly.
The team used a multiple-baseline design across writing skills. They tracked how often kids used words like "red car" or "ran quickly" before and after the lessons.
What they found
Right after the package started, every child wrote more sentences. They also used target words correctly far more often.
Gains showed up the first day and stayed high. Kids needed almost no extra help once the system was running.
How this fits with other research
Alexander (1985) ran a similar classroom package. That study taught learning-disabled kids to retell stories using a self-managed SQ3R plan. Both papers show one brief teacher-led package can lift academic language fast.
Salazar et al. (2021) used direct instruction too. Their phonics package improved reading for students with intellectual disability. The pattern is clear: clear modeling plus practice equals language gains across diagnoses.
Laçin (2024) looks different at first glance. That team used shared reading, not writing, with preschoolers with autism. Yet both studies used visual cues and adult prompts to grow language. The age and skill differ, but the prompt-plus-model heart is the same.
Why it matters
You can copy this 1979 package tomorrow. Show a model sentence, set a clear goal, hand out tokens, and watch written grammar grow. It works for kids with hearing loss or language injury and needs almost no gear.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Put two model sentences on the board, give one token each time a student uses an adjective or adverb correctly in his journal, and count the uses for baseline vs. teaching.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The effect of an instructional package, which included modeling, reinforcement, and remedial feedback on the rate, accuracy, and topography of sentences composed by four hearing impaired and aphasic children, was examined. In a specially designed classroom, students wrote sentences describing a stimulus picture on acetate sheets placed on the stage of an overhead projector which was built into each student's desk. This arrangement provided the teacher and other students immediate and continuous visual access to each student's sentences. In a multiple baseline design across behaviors, model sentences were projected and token reinforcment and remedial feedback were made contingent upon writing correct sentences containing prenominal adjectives only, then adverbs only, then prenomial adjectives plus adverbs. During baseline all student displayed poor written language skills and seldom wrote sentences containing modifiers. When the instructional package was implemented, all students demonstrated significant increases in response rate, accuracy, and percentage of correct sentences including prenominal adjectives and adverbs.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1979 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1979.12-391