Posted by Prof Padraic Monaghan “No dad,” sighed my five year old last night with weary impatience at having to explain such trivial things to her parent, “that’s a trigraph in ‘high’.” Our daughter is now clearly initiated into her phonics training – learning the...

Posted by Prof Ben Ambridge Us parents are bombarded with all sorts of information. Do this. Do that. Whatever you do, don’t do THAT! The problem is, lots of the advice we receive isn’t based on any solid evidence – it’s just passed on by word of mouth or even made up...

Posted by Samantha Durrant It’s that time of year again, the start of a new school term and inevitable meetings with teachers or curriculum information evenings. My own son transitioned to high school this September so I found myself sitting in a school hall with many...

Posted by Charlotte Burgar Though infant language development has been widely studied, individual differences that affect language development, such as speed of processing, have recently received increased attention. Speed of processing refers to how quickly infants...

Posted by Prof Padraic MonaghanThis has not been a normal year. In England, three national lockdowns profoundly affected the usual schedules of children and their families, meaning children were not able to attend preschool or school settings for a large proportion of...

BackgroundBack in 2017/18, we teamed up with literacy charity, Beanstalk, and book-gifting charity, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library UK, to deliver ‘Story Starters’, an innovative project that aimed to boost the language and communicative development of nursery...

Posted by Prof Padraic MonaghanPre-school language development has a profound impact on life outcomes. We also know that the gap between children with poorer and better language skills when they arrive at school persists throughout their schooling. The fundamental...