IMSE and OxEd Partner to Put Oral Language at the Center of Early Literacy

The Institute for Multi-Sensory Education (IMSE) today announced a partnership with OxEd, a University of Oxford spinout, to expand access to evidence-based oral language screening, instruction and intervention for U.S. schools. Under the partnership, IMSE will identify districts that could benefit from OxEd's oral language screening tool, LanguageScreen, and its whole-class instruction and intervention program, TEL Ted, and refer them to OxEd. Together, the programs help pre-K through third grade educators identify oral language needs early and support students who need extra help.

Oral language—the speaking and listening skills children use to understand and express ideas—is an important predictor of later literacy achievement. Many districts have taken the important step of investing in foundational reading instruction through programs such as IMSE's Orton-Gillingham Plus (OG+), giving students the decoding skills they need to read. Oral language builds on that foundation, helping students understand the words they've learned to read. Yet these gaps often go unnoticed until fourth or fifth grade, when they’re harder to close. 

“As a speech-language pathologist, I saw firsthand the connection between language and reading difficulties among students on my caseload,” said Dr. Allison Slone, CCC-SLP, curriculum designer at IMSE. “Oral language is the foundation for reading and writing. I was struck by how quickly OxEd’s LanguageScreen gives teachers a clear picture of a student’s skills and areas for improvement. Paired with TEL Ted, it gives them a manageable way to expand and improve students’ oral language skills, which strengthens and complements the high-quality Structured Literacy instruction IMSE helps educators deliver.”

The partnership pairs IMSE's 30 years of Structured Literacy expertise with OxEd's oral language research. OxEd founder and CEO Dr. Charles Hulme, a professor emeritus of psychology and education at the University of Oxford, led the research teams behind LanguageScreen and the TEL Ted program, known outside the U.S. as the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI). LanguageScreen is a digital assessment that takes less than 10 minutes per student to assess oral language skills and track students’ oral language development. Normed on U.S. students and validated against speech-language pathologist assessments, it can be administered by any trained adult in the school, helping districts screen students without adding to speech-language pathologists’ assessment backlogs.

“Children can only understand what they read as well as they understand spoken language,” said Hulme. “When schools identify language difficulties early and provide targeted support, more children have the opportunity to develop the comprehension skills they need to become confident, successful readers. Strong oral language skills provide the foundation not only for learning to read, but for learning across the curriculum and throughout education.” 

The TEL Ted program pairs whole-class oral language activities with a 20-week small-group and individual intervention for students who need more support. Schools can fit the intervention into their schedules alongside existing instruction, adding oral language support that complements existing phonics instruction, which together build the foundations necessary for learning to read. Across multiple peer-reviewed trials, children who received intervention using TEL Ted made an average of three to five months of additional progress in oral language skills beyond what would normally be expected. The most disadvantaged students made up to seven months of additional progress. Across US schools and districts, after 20-weeks of TEL Ted, 50% of participating students were no longer classified as high risk for language concerns. TEL Ted also complements IMSE's Pre-K Literacy Plus course, which equips pre-K educators to build students' oral language skills through structured read-alouds, planful classroom conversations, and high-quality teacher talk. 

In addition to serving schools and districts in 28 states and Washington, D.C., OxEd is a part of Wyoming's statewide Comprehensive Literacy State Development grant. Internationally, it provides assessment and intervention to thousands of schools across five countries, including national rollouts in partnership with the Departments of Education in England and Paraguay.

The partnership builds on IMSE's existing legacy of empowering educators with the training and tools to bring the science of reading into every classroom, so students can not only read the words on the page but also understand them. Districts interested in adding oral language screening and intervention to their literacy instruction can visit IMSE to learn more.