Ebbels, Susan. 2007.

"Teaching Grammar to School-Aged Children with Specific Language

Impairment Using Shape Coding." Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 23(1): 67-93.

 Shape coding is a method to effectively teach grammar to children with

language disorders (SLD).
 The method uses shapes and colors to explain English grammar rules.
 Specific language disorder (SLD) affects 7% of children and continues into
adolescence; it leads to learning difficulties.
 Visual coding methods are based on the assumption that increasing the
frequency and prominence of target forms will enable children to learn the
rules of language normally.
 Explicit approaches to teaching syntax to children with SLI often use visual
coding.
 Shape Coding was developed to illustrate more complex sentence structures
and verb morphology using a visual coding system.
 Shape Coding combines the Colour Pattern Scheme and Colourful Semantics
approaches by using colors for parts of speech and shapes to code phrases
according to their functions and positions in sentences.
 The Shape Coding System visually represents the main linguistic features of
English.
 Each phrase is associated with a question, a symbol and a color according to its
part of speech.
 Phrases have the following symbology: Nouns: Oval; Prepositional, Adjectives:
Semicircle; Auxiliaries and modals: Rhombus.
 Verbs have the following coding: Tensed verbs, have vertical arrows going down
from the underlined verb; Present tense verbs have an arrow in the middle of
the line, and past tense verbs have an arrow at the left end of the lineThe
present participle is represented with a zig-zag line under the '-ing'.
 Exercises that include drawing shapes around written sentences, identifying
shape templates for spoken sentences, and creating sentences for shape
templates, either orally or in writing.
 Helping to make links between shapes and sentences by putting the shapes
shown upside down on one side and the sentence on the other so that the child
develops curiosity and contextual language.
 Having the shape constantly change helps to anchor meanings.
 Use shape coding only for the areas you are trying to teach, not all the time.
 In this study, shape coding was taught to three children with SLI.
 The representations of animals and things were linked with complex concepts
and sentences making the children progressively progress to understanding and
relating.
 Shape coding showed great progress in all three children.
 The focus of the study is on concept comparison and specifically on syntax.
 The teaching of comparative questions between two children improved their
understanding after therapy.
 The children learn to use the forms and replace the parts of sentences and thus
make important connections.
 The understanding of the children participating in the method improved in all
three case studies in the areas tested: verbs, questions with verbs, passive form
and past tense.
 The studies conducted on shape coding give us really useful metrics, my
contribution is that these should be further analyzed with other English
language structures to see if they can be useful in these cases.