Oral Language Outcomes After Narrative Intervention in Bilingual School-Age Children Who Are Hard of Hearing

This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a 6-week bilingual (English-Spanish) narrative intervention on the language macrostructure of 3 children who are hard of hearing (HH), aged 6 to 8. Using an adapted alternating treatment design, children received 12 sessions, 6 in each language, where they worked on retelling narratives. In addition, children were encouraged to create personal narratives at baseline and maintenance phases. The intervention was effective for increasing retelling scores in Participants 1 and 3’s weakest language, while maintaining their skills in the stronger language. They also demonstrated increases in their personal narratives, indicating a potential generalization effect of the intervention. No intervention effect was observed for Participant 2. The families valued the intervention highly, especially in Spanish, given the scarcity of bilingual therapies available to them. In conclusion, the bilingual narrative intervention seems promising for increasing language macrostructure in children who are HH.