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Time to Talk Implementing outstanding practice in
speech language and communication 1st Edition Jean
Gross Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jean Gross
ISBN(s): 9780415633338, 0415633338
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Year: 2013
Language: english
Time to Talk
Time to Talk provides a powerful and accessible resource for practitioners to help develop their
own skills, as well as supporting a whole-school or setting approach to speaking and listening.
Written by the government’s former Communication Champion for children, it showcases
and celebrates effective approaches in schools and settings across the country. Jean Gross help-
fully summarises research on what helps children and young people develop good language
and communication skills, and highlights the importance of key factors: a place to talk, a reason
to talk and support for talk.
This practical, engaging and full colour book also provides:
● whole-class approaches to developing all children and young people’s speaking and listen-
ing skills;
● ‘catch-up’ strategies for those with limited language;
● ways in which settings and schools can develop an effective partnership with specialists
(such as speech and language therapists) to help children with more severe needs;
● examples of good practice in supporting parents/carers to develop their children’s
language skills; and
● answers to practitioners’ most frequently asked questions about speech and language.
This book is for all school leaders, teachers and early-years practitioners concerned about the
growing number of children and young people with limited language and communication
skills.
Jean Gross CBE has recently been England’s Communication Champion for children,
responsible for promoting the importance of good language skills for all children and young
people, and improving services for those needing help in learning to communicate. She is the
author of numerous articles and best-selling books on children’s issues, including Beating
Bureaucracy in Special Educational Needs (2nd edition, David Fulton).
nasen is a professional membership association that supports all those who work with or care
for children and young people with special and additional educational needs. Members
include teachers, teaching assistants, support workers, other educationalists, students and
parents.
nasen supports its members through policy documents, journals, its magazine Special!,
publications, professional development courses, regional networks and newsletters. Its website
contains more current information such as responses to government consultations. nasen’s
published documents are held in very high regard both in the UK and internationally.
Other titles published in association with the National Association for Special Educational
Needs (nasen):
Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Inclusive Classroom

Sally McKeown and Angela McGlashon
2011/pb: 978-0-415-67254-2
Language for Learning in the Secondary School: A Practical Guide for Supporting Students with
Speech, Language and Communication Needs
Sue Hayden and Emma Jordan
2012/pb: 978-0-415-61975-2
ADHD: All Your Questions Answered: A Complete Handbook for SENCOs and Teachers
Fintan O’Regan
2012/pb: 978-0-415-59770-8
Assessing Children with Specific Learning Difficulties: A Teacher’s Practical Guide

Gavin Reid, Gad Elbeheri and John Everatt
2012/pb: 978-0-415-67027-2
Using Playful Practice to Communicate with Special Children
Margaret Corke
2012/pb: 978-0-415-68767-6
The Equality Act for Educational Professionals: A simple guide to disability and inclusion in schools
Geraldine Hills
2012/pb: 978-0-415-68768-3
More Trouble with Maths: A teacher’s complete guide to identifying and diagnosing mathematical
difficulties
Steve Chinn
2012/pb: 978-0-415-67013-5
Dyslexia and Inclusion: Classroom Approaches for Assessment,Teaching and Learning, second edition
Gavin Reid
2012/pb: 978-0-415-60758-2
Provision Mapping: Improving outcomes in primary schools

Anne Massey
2012/pb: 978-0-415-53030-9
Promoting and Delivering School-to-School Support for Special Educational Needs: A practical guide
for SENCOs
Rita Cheminais
2013/pb 978-0-415-63370-3
Time to Talk: Implementing outstanding practice in speech, language and communication

Jean Gross
2013/pb: 978-0-415-63334-5
This page intentionally left blank
Time to Talk
Implementing outstanding practice in speech,

language and communication
Jean Gross
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Jean Gross
The right of Jean Gross to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.The purchase of this copyright material confers the right on the
purchasing institution to photocopy pages which bear the photocopy icon and copyright
line at the bottom of the page. No other parts of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gross, Jean.
Time to talk : implementing outstanding practice in speech, language and
communication / Authored by Jean Gross.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Language arts (Elementary)–Great Britain. 2. Literacy programs–Great Britain.
3. Mainstreaming in education–Great Britain. 4. Communication–Education. I.Title.
LB1576.G785 2013
372.6–dc23
2012048238
ISBN: 978-0-415-63333-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-63334-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-09510-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by FiSH Books Ltd, Enfield
Contents
Preface viii
1 Speech, language and communication – a growing issue 1
2 What do we know about how to support language development? 14
3 Stories from schools 25
4 A place to talk 38
5 A reason to talk 52
6 Teaching talk 67
7 Support for talk 94
8 Working with parents and carers to develop their children’s language skills 136
9 Supporting children with more severe needs 146
References 158
Index 162
Preface
For the two years between 2010 and 2012, I had the privilege of being the government’s
Communication Champion, charged with raising awareness of the importance of good
communication skills for children and young people, and identifying and disseminating exam-
ples of good practice. One of my roles was to work with the Communication Trust to lead a
national year of communication – the 2011 Hello campaign.
During those two years I travelled the country and saw many examples of inspiring prac-
tice in early years settings, schools, local authorities and their partner health services. Many
people also contacted me to tell me about their work. I became, for a while, a kind of repos-
itory of good ideas about developing language and communication skills for all children and
young people, and providing effective help for those who struggle in this area.
It is these ideas I want to pass on through this book. I am deeply grateful to all who shared
their practice so generously; I hope I have acknowledged their work. I also know, however,
that from time to time I may unwittingly have drawn on ideas whose source I have been
unable to trace. If so, please let me know and I will make sure that your work is appropriately
credited in any future editions.
Particular thanks go to all at the Communication Trust, ICAN and the National Literacy
Trust for their expertise, and to Nasen for all their help during the national year of commu-
nication and their support for this publication. I am also very grateful to all the brilliant speech
and language therapists who taught me so much about language, to all the settings and schools
who feature as case studies in this book, and to those who helped me source photographs of
communication-supportive environments: Elizabeth Jarman, Carol-Ann Howe and schools in
North Yorkshire,Torriano Junior School in Camden, the speech and language therapy service
and Foley Park Primary School in Worcestershire, the speech and language therapy service and
schools in Lewisham, Lancasterian Specialist School in Manchester, schools and support serv-
ices in Rochdale, and staff at Derwentwater Primary School in Ealing. Finally, big thanks go
to Esme, Reuben, Oscar and Isaac (and their parents) for donating their lovely photos for use
in this book.
Jean Gross CBE

October 2012
Speech, language and
1 communication – a growing
issue
A growing issue
The ability to communicate – to say what you want to say and to understand what other
people are saying – is fundamental to life chances.
Some of the statistics about the links between language skills and life chances are startling.
For example:
● vocabulary at age five is one of the most significant predictors of the qualifications pupils
achieve when they leave school;
● more than half of children starting school in socially disadvantaged areas of England have
delayed language; and
● two thirds of 7- to 14-year-olds with serious behaviour problems have language impair-
ment.
Numbers of children and young people with difficulties in language appear to be growing.
During the five years between 2005 and 2010, government figures show a 58 per cent rise in
those with speech, language and communication needs as their primary type of special educa-
tional need (SEN).
Head teachers are also increasingly concerned about the numbers of pupils starting school
with limited language skills – using a very restricted vocabulary and not talking in sentences.
This is often linked to social deprivation, but not exclusively so. In my time as
Communication Champion I met many teachers in affluent areas who told me about children
of ‘cash-rich, time-poor’ parents who were starting school unable to hold a conversation. One
such child had recently been bought a BlackBerry by his parents.
There is much speculation about the reasons for poor communication skills, from over-use
of technology, or less time for parents to talk with their children, to the invention of central
heating (which means families don’t have to be in one room any more in order to keep
warm).We have little hard evidence one way or another to prove whether these social changes
are causing a rise in language difficulties, but the end result is a problem that schools and
settings increasingly feel the need to address.
Talk in the classroom

There is much research evidence that children achieve better where their classrooms provide
rich opportunities for talk.The Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander, 2009) undertook an
2 Speech, language and communication
extensive review of the literature and concluded that we should ‘Make a concerted effort to
ensure that language, particularly spoken language, achieves its full potential as a key to cogni-
tive development, learning and successful teaching.’
The influential EPPSI study (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2011) found that teachers in highly
effective schools used dialogic teaching and learning, involving collaborative talk and instruc-
tional conversations. Similarly, a number of Ofsted thematic national reports have identified
effective practice in speaking and listening as a key feature of outstanding schools.
Extracts from national Ofsted reports

In the most effective schools visited, inspectors saw teachers thread rich opportunities for
speaking and listening into lessons. In turn, this led to improved standards in writing.
– Ofsted Annual Report 2009/10
A common feature of the most successful schools in the survey was the attention they
gave to developing speaking and listening.
– Removing Barriers to Literacy, January 2011
In the schools visited, there were ‘opportunities for developing mathematical language
so that pupils learned to express their thinking using the correct vocabulary’.
– Good Practice in Primary Mathematics: Evidence from 20 Successful Schools, November 2011
Current policies
Perhaps because of this evidence about the importance of talk, current national policy is
beginning to place a much greater emphasis on oral language than it did in the previous two
decades.
The revised EarlyYears Foundation Stage curriculum gives a high priority to language and
communication as one of three prime areas of learning. No longer is it part of literacy; it is
there in its own right. Government have also noted, in their vision for the Foundation Years
(DfE, 2011), that they intend to ‘drive improvements in the quality of free early education,
promoting a strong emphasis on speech, language and communication as central to good
provision.’
At the time of writing, we await the revised National Curriculum for 5- to 19-year-olds,
but it is likely also to prioritise oral language. The 2012 professional standards for teachers
include a requirement that all teachers, whatever subject they teach, must be able to promote
‘articulacy’ as well as literacy.
Finally, Ofsted have included in the 2012 inspection framework for schools (Ofsted, 2012)
the extent to which:
● pupils develop a range of skills, including reading, writing, communication and mathe-
matical skills, and how well they apply these across the curriculum; and
● reading, writing, communication and mathematics are well taught.
Speech, language and communication 3
Are we ready?
For all the reasons above, language and communication is a ‘hot topic’ for all those who work
in education.There is a long way to go, however, in changing practice. For many schools and
settings spoken language has for too long taken a back seat. I will never forget, for example,
the maths teacher who was interviewed for a survey on attitudes to spoken language in the
curriculum and said ‘Communication is not important in my lesson.’ This is an extreme
example, but I would invite you to reflect on the diagram in Table 1.1, which suggests that
while listening and speaking are learned first in infancy and childhood, and used most
throughout both childhood and adult life, they are taught least in our schools. Does the
diagram apply to your school or to the schools you work with?
Table 1.1 Learned, used, taught
Listening Speaking Reading Writing
Learned first second third third
Used most next to most next to least least
Taught least next to least next to most most
Turning the dial

Schools that ‘turn the dial’ on language and communication are able to turn the dial on a
number of key school improvement priorities, from raising attainment to narrowing the gap
and improving behaviour.
Attainment
Good speech and language skills predict school attainment.As head teachers know, the barrier
for many children in achieving Level 4+ in English at the end of Key Stage 2 is their lack of
oral language to support reading comprehension and writing.
● Vocabulary at age five is a very strong predictor of the qualifications achieved at school
leaving age and beyond (Feinstein and Duckworth, 2006).
● Early speech, language and communication difficulties are a very significant predictor of
later literacy difficulties (Snowling, 2006).
● At the age of six there is a gap of a few months between the reading age of children who
had good oral language skills at five, and those who had poor oral language skills at five.
By the time they are 14, this gap has widened to five years’ difference in reading age
(Hirsch, 1996).
● Research in one local authority found that children achieving below Level 2 in Reading
and Writing at the end of KS1 had an average standardised score of only 75 on a test of
oral language skills – 11 points less than those who achieved Level 2+. There was no
difference between the groups on non-verbal intelligence. At KS2 there was an even
bigger gap – of 19 points – between the language skills of those who achieved Level 4+
in English and those who didn’t (Gross, 2002).
Narrowing the gap

Many schools are finding that a strategy to address children’s impoverished language is play-
ing a key part in their efforts to narrow the attainment gap between less well-off children and
their peers.
Language skills are a critical factor in social disadvantage:
● On average a toddler from a family on welfare will hear around 600 words per hour, with
a ratio of two prohibitions (‘stop that’, ‘get down off there’) to one encouraging
comment. A child from a professional family will hear over 2000 words per hour, with a
ratio of six encouraging comments to one negative (Hart and Risley, 2003).
● While, as we have seen, language difficulties are not confined to socially disadvantaged
areas, Jane Waldfogel (using data from a large cohort of children born in the year 2000)
found an average 16-month gap in vocabulary between children from the most and least
wealthy families, at the age of five. The gap in language was very much larger than gaps
in other cognitive skills (Waldfogel and Washbrook, 2010).
● More than half of children starting nursery school in socially disadvantaged areas of
England have delayed language. While their general cognitive abilities are in the average
range for their age, their language skills are well behind (Locke et al., 2002)
● Vocabulary at age five has been found to be the best predictor (from a range of measures
at age five and ten) of whether children who experienced social deprivation in childhood
were able to ‘buck the trend’ and escape poverty in later adult life (Blanden, 2006).
● Research has shown that gaps in language ability between more and less disadvantaged
children persist in to secondary school. One study (Spencer et al., 2012), for example,
found significant differences between the scores of pupils living in disadvantaged areas
when compared to more affluent areas on comprehension of spoken paragraphs, sentence
length and vocabulary.They did not differ on a measure of non-verbal ability. 21 per cent
of the pupils in the socially disadvantaged cohort had clinically significant and hitherto
undetected language difficulties.
Behaviour and wellbeing

Speech and language skills also predict behaviour and wellbeing. Good language skills act as a
‘protective factor’ which reduces the likelihood of poor school attendance, truancy, delin-
quency and substance misuse.
● Two-thirds of 7- to 14-year-olds with serious behaviour problems have language impair-

ment (Cohen et al. 1998).
● Two thirds of young offenders have speech, language and communication difficulties, but
in only 5 per cent of cases were they identified before the offending began (Bryan, 2008).
Employability
The changing jobs market means that spoken communication skills, along with influencing
skills, computing skills and literacy skills, have shown the greatest increase in employer-rated
importance over the last 10 years (UK Commission for Employment and Skills, 2010).
● 47 per cent of employers in England report difficulty in finding employees with an appro-
priate level of oral communication skills (UK Commission for Employment and Skills,
2010).
● Language difficulties have been identified as a key risk factor in becoming NEET – that
is,‘not in employment, education or training’ (Scottish Social Research Executive, 2005).
● In one study, 88 per cent of young unemployed men were found to have language diffi-
culties (Elliott, 2009).
These are just some of the many reasons why school and early years setting leadership teams
might see speech, language and communication needs as crucial to their setting or school
improvement planning.
The scale of the problem

School census data shows that speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) are the
most common type of primary SEN in primary schools, making up 29 per cent of the total
(DfE, 2012).
As we have seen, some theorists believe that growing numbers reflect a growing social prob-
lem, with links to disadvantage. But it is not just a social problem. Irrespective of disadvantage,
and irrespective of wider societal factors like time spent on TV and texting and computer
games, international research shows that around 7 per cent of children have a biologically based
specific language impairment that makes it difficult for them to process language.
On top of this, we have another 3 per cent who have SLCN linked to another type of need,
such as hearing or physical impairment, Down syndrome or autism. So that makes at least 10
per cent – on average, three children per reception class – who need extra help with speech,
language or communication. And then we have the equally significant (though actually easier
to remedy) language delays linked to social disadvantage.
So the sheer scale of SLCN is one reason for making sure that it is part of schools’ or
settings’ planning to improve outcomes for children.
Children learning English as an additional language

Another reason for focusing on spoken communication a key strategy for school improvement
is the increasing numbers of pupils in our schools who are learning English as an additional
language (EAL). EAL learners now make up over one in seven of the school population.
To be an EAL learner is not of itself a problem or a deficit – the opposite, in fact, since research
is showing that EAL learners have superior problem-solving skills, and ‘executive function’ ability
to filter and focus on information that is important (Lauchlan et al., 2012), perhaps because of the
mental alertness they develop in order to switch between languages. But it does mean that the
child has a need for additional support in acquiring English, in order to succeed academically.
This need may not always be obvious. The well-known theorist Professor Jim Cummins
(Cummins, 2008) makes the distinction between two differing kinds of language proficiency
– ‘BICS’ and ‘CALP’. BICS are basic interpersonal communication skills; these are the ‘surface’
skills of listening and speaking that are typically acquired quickly by many students, particu-
larly by those from language backgrounds similar to English who spend a lot of their school
time interacting with native speakers.
CALP is cognitive academic language proficiency, and, as the name suggests, is the basis for
a child’s ability to cope with the academic demands placed on them across the school curricu-
lum. CALP tends to have a high degree of context independence or ‘disembedding’, and a
high incidence of low-frequency vocabulary and grammatical complexity (for example, the
use of subordinate clauses, and of nominalisation – where verbs and adjectives expressing
concrete ideas are turned into abstract nouns, so that ‘how quickly cracks in glass grow’
becomes ‘glass crack growth rate’).
Cummins notes that while many second language learners develop conversational fluency
(BICS) within two years of immersion in the target language, it takes much longer (five to
seven years) to learn the more academic language (CALP).
Cummins has another very helpful model, which describes the task of teachers in working
with EAL learners. The model (Figure 1.1) categorises different learning tasks along two
dimensions. One dimension reflects the level of cognitive challenge in the task, ranging from
cognitively undemanding to cognitively demanding.The other dimension reflects the degree
of contextual support, from context-embedded to context-reduced.A context-embedded task
is one in which the student has access to a range of additional visual and oral cues; for exam-
ple, they can look at illustrations of what is being talked about or ask questions to confirm
understanding. A context-reduced task is one such as listening to a lecture or reading dense
text, where there are no sources of help other than the language itself. Clearly, a D quadrant
task, which is both cognitively demanding and context-reduced, is likely to be the most diffi-
cult for students, particularly for non-native speakers in their first years of learning English.
However, it is essential that EAL students develop the ability to accomplish such tasks, since
academic success is impossible without it.
context embedded
A B
cognitively cognitively
undemanding demanding
C D
context reduced
Figure 1.1 Context-embedded and context-reduced tasks

One of the lightbulb moments for me in my time as Communication Champion was the
realisation that this model does not only apply to EAL learners. It also applies to children
whose environment has not provided them with opportunities to hear and use context-
reduced language. It applies to children who have not had stories told to them, or had
opportunities to engage in sophisticated conversations at home that are about events and ideas
beyond the immediate here and now.
So the task for school improvement seems to me to move children from everyday conver-
sational language to disembedded formal talk – talk which, unlike informal conversational
talk, does not depend on seeing what is happening for comprehension – whatever the reason
for the child’s need for help in making to make that crucial transition.
Yet this is difficult for schools.There is an intriguing historic lack of interface between the
understandings of two different ‘camps’ – the experts who deal with EAL and those who deal
with children with special needs in speech, language and communication. It is clear, however,
that graphic organisers from the EAL world can support children with SLCN, that visual
timetables and Widgit symbols beloved of the SEN/SLCN world can support EAL learners,
and that the progression in language structures for EAL learners (which I will describe in
Chapter 6) is in fact a progression that can apply to all children.
I hope this book will help to bridge these different sources of expertise.
Can we make a difference?

No studies so far have directly followed up the later impact of interventions to improve
children and young people’s language skills on end of key stage attainment or employability.
We know, however, that:
● Children whose language difficulties were resolved by the age of five and a half were more
likely to go on to develop good reading and spelling skills – and keep pace with their
peers, passing as many exams on leaving school as children without a history of language
disorder (Conti-Ramsden et al., 2009).
● Key Stage 2 children with poor reading comprehension made greater improvements in
reading when provided with an intervention to develop their oral language than they did
when provided with an intervention directly targeting reading comprehension skills
(Snowling et al., 2010).
● Socially disadvantaged children can catch up with other children in language skills after
just nine months if their teachers are trained to have the right kind of conversations with
them (Hank and Deacon, 2008).
● Small group interventions to boost language skills have a rapid, measurable effect on
vocabulary and other aspects of language development – themselves very strong predic-
tors of later academic achievement. Key Stage 1 children receiving one such intervention,
for example, made on average eighteen months progress on a test of vocabulary and
language development after just ten weeks of group help (Lee, 2011).
● It is never too late. Re-conviction rates for offenders who studied the English Speaking
Board’s oral communication course fell to 21 per cent (compared with the national aver-
age of 44 per cent), greater than the fall to 28 per cent for offenders who followed a
general education course (Moseley et al., 2006).
The impact of national initiatives

The national Every Child a Talker initiative provides evidence of the impact that is possible
when concerted action is taken to target language and communication skills. Every Child a
Talker was implemented between 2008 and 2011, eventually reaching all local authority areas
in England. It provided professional development for early-years practitioners to develop their
own skills and enable them to increase the involvement of parents in supporting children’s
language in the home. In Every Child a Talker each local area involved was funded for an Early
Language Consultant (a post often shared between a speech and language therapist and a
teacher). Settings involved all assessed children’s language development using a child monitor-
ing profiling tool, which identifies children who are not at age-expected levels in the four
strands of attention and listening, speaking, understanding and social communication. Where
children were identified as delayed, staff provided targeted support.
Robust national and local impact data were generated from the programme’s child moni-
toring profiling tool. Among the 114,000 children involved there was a reduction of between
10 and 14 per cent in the number of children showing language delay across all four strands,
and large increases in the percentage of children performing ahead of age-related expectations.
Figures 1.2 and 1.3 show the data for the first ‘wave’ of local authorities involved.
National data from the EarlyYears Foundation Stage Profile also suggest a significant impact
for Every Child a Talker. Over the 2007–2010 period, there was an overall ten per cent
increase in the numbers of children achieving a good level of development on the profile’s
‘Language for Communication and Thinking’ scale. Interestingly, between 2010 and 2011,
when Every Child a Talker was reaching its peak numbers of children, there was also a reduc-
tion from 4 to 3 per cent in the percentage of five-year-olds showing very significant
difficulties on this scale.
40
35
30
25 Autumn 2009
Spring 2010
20
Summer 2010
15
10
0
L &A UL SST SS
Figure 1.2 Every Child a Talker national data: percentage of children showing language delay
Notes: L&A: listening and attention; UL: understanding language; SST: speech sounds and talk; SS: social skills
30
25
20
Autumn 2009
15 Spring 2010
Summer 2010
10
0
L &A UL SST SS
Figure 1.3 Every Child a Talker national data: percentage of children ahead of expected language
development levels
Notes: L&A: listening and attention; UL: understanding language; SST: speech sounds and talk; SS: social skills
The case study below illustrates the impact of Every Child a Talker in one local authority.
CASE STUDY
In Bolton, a speech and language therapist and an early years consultant (a member of
the inclusion support teaching service) supported twenty settings, providing a well-
regarded model of training (Elklan; see www.elklan.co.uk) to Early Language Lead
Professionals, who ranged from assistant head teachers to foundation phase leads to nurs-
ery practitioners and heads of ‘rooms’ in settings. Training also included Elizabeth
Jarman’s influential Communication Friendly Spaces™ and Bags for Families approaches.
Each setting was also offered time from the speech and language therapist or consultant
to model the running of small group ‘Nursery Narrative’ programme two or three times
a week for twenty minutes a time. All children were assessed before and after this inter-
vention using a standardised language measure in addition to the Every Child a Talker
child monitoring profiling tool.
After two terms, children made an average 26 point gain when the normal expecta-
tion would be a three point gain. There were also very significant reductions in the
numbers of children behind age norms in the 1200 children involved; between January
and June, numbers showing delay showed a drop of between 15 and 26 percentage
points across the four monitoring profile tool strands. Put another way, this meant that
the equivalent of ten whole reception classes were no longer showing delay.
The work is now being extended into further schools, and up the age range, with a
target of 40 per cent of schools being involved and an aim that every setting and school
will have its own Communication Champion.
Moving down the age range, the local authority used the principles of Every Child a
Talker in their provision of free daycare provision for two-year-olds in socially deprived
areas. Children were screened using a Healthy Child Programme checklist, and their
settings were supported with targeted training in speech and language.
The impact of local strategic action

Other evidence to show that it is possible to make a difference to language and communica-
tion development comes from local areas like Stoke-on-Trent, Sheffield and Nottinghamshire,
which have recognised children and young people’s communication skills as a priority, and
developed community-wide, interagency strategies to upskill the children’s workforce and get
key messages across to parents. Strategies like these can make a significant difference. The
‘Stoke Speaks Out’ early-years campaign has succeeded in reducing the percentage of three-
to four-year-olds with language delay from 64 per cent in 2004 to 39 per cent in 2010.
Sheffield’s ‘Every Sheffield Child Articulate and Literate by 11’ initiative witnessed an
improvement of seven percentage points in the proportion of five year old children achieving
a good level of development in communication, language and literacy and personal, social and
emotional development in the first year of implementing the strategy, and a significant clos-
ing of the gap between the lowest-achieving children and their peers. The percentage of
children in Sheffield achieving above the expected level in reading and in writing at age seven
also increased markedly, underpinned by schools’ focus on speaking and listening.There was a
nine per cent increase in the number of schools receiving good or outstanding Ofsted judge-
ments for pupils’ achievement and the extent to which they enjoy their learning, and for
pupils’ behaviour.
CASE STUDY
Stoke Speaks Out is a multi-agency strategy set up in 2004 to tackle the high incidence
of speech and language difficulties in Stoke-on-Trent. It aims to support attachment,
parenting and speech and language issues through training, support and advice. It devel-
oped from local Sure Start initiatives, which identified that between 60 and 80 per cent
of children assessed in Stoke at age three to four years had a language delay.
A common early years assessment tool is now used by all agencies from health visitors
to early years consultants to speech and language therapists. Practitioners in early years
settings are trained to know whether a child’s language and social development is age-
appropriate. Following an audit of skills that showed that health visitors had had no
training in child development, all members of the health visiting team receive a two-day
child development module that covers essential skills parents need to help their child
build the basics for learning.
The programme has developed a multi-agency training framework for all practition-
ers working in the city with children from birth to seven years, or their families. The
training has five levels, ranging from awareness-raising to detailed theoretical levels, and
was jointly written by the project team of speech and language therapists, a psycholo-
gist, a midwife, play workers, teachers and a bilingual worker. All levels have an
expectation that the practitioner will create change in their working environment. In
addition the initiative has developed resources for parents, including a model for toddler
groups to follow which enhances language development, and a website offering practi-
cal information for parents to help with children’s language development. ‘Talking
walk-ins’ provide drop in sessions at Children’s Centres where parents can get advice
from speech and language therapists.
CASE STUDY
‘Every Sheffield Child Articulate and Literate’ (ESCAL) is a city-wide strategy deliver-
ing a systematic, lively approach to the development of communication skills from birth
to age 11. Interest from secondary schools means that it is now beginning to expand to
age 19. ESCAL brings together partners in the local authority learning and achievement
service, the speech and language therapy service, health visitors, midwives, universities,
housing, services for looked after children, libraries and museums.
The strategy aims to ensure that:
● every child is listened to and is able to express themselves confidently;

● children with delayed or impaired speech, language and communication receive
support;
● practitioners know how to develop communication skills across a broad curriculum
and how to track progress; and
● parents/carers are involved at all stages.
ESCAL uses the ‘three-Wave’ model:
● Wave 1 (Universal): Leadership development, universal multi-agency training for all

early-years and primary practitioners, a speech and language tracking tool from
birth to age 11, a consistent approach to visual support, an audit tool for commu-
nication-friendly schools, strategies to promote communication across the
curriculum, parental involvement resources and parents’ accreditation.
● Wave 2 (Targeted): Intervention packages (language enrichment, vocabulary devel-
opment and narrative skills) and a Talk Volunteer programme.
● Wave 3 (Specialist Services): A ‘team around the child’ approach, with specialist
training, and workshops delivered by speech and language therapists to parents of
children with language impairment.
Agencies work together to promote a high profile for talk. Schools have been provided,
for example, with wooden soapboxes for children to use to develop their speaking and
listening skills, culminating in a ‘Speakers’ Corner’ event.A Mad Hatters Talk Picnic took
place in the city centre, involving over 1000 children. Key messages reached over
100,000 local people through media coverage of this event. Creative and cultural
industries provided events such as Voice Explosion (Sheffield Theatres), Talking Movies
(Cineworld) and Big Broadcasting Podcasting (Hallam FM radio).
There has been a major focus on reaching disadvantaged or hard-to-reach commu-
nities, including a Family Time marketing campaign and Family Time Workshops about
supporting children’s language in the home, delivered in targeted areas of the city.A top-
tips poster for new parents was put on display in the hospital maternity wing, distributed
by health visitors and published in the local paper, reaching 40,000 readers. A partner-
ship with the Child Poverty Strategy enabled the Family Time campaign to run with
teen and lone parents and the Yemeni/Somali community. Family Learning activities
(Talking Together and Family Chatter Bags) have been provided in targeted areas. Speech
and language therapy is now provided in schools, reducing the number of families not
accessing services.
Local community strategies

As well as high-impact strategies to improve children’s communication across a whole local
authority area, we are beginning to see a growth in more local strategies, which take a ‘cradle
to college’ approach across a community. One example is the ‘Talk of the Town’ initiative, in
the Wythenshawe area of Manchester.
CASE STUDY
In the ‘Talk of the Town’ initiative,The Communication Trust worked with a secondary
school, its feeder primaries, Children’s Centres and multi-agency partners in one area of
Manchester. The project aimed to embed the early identification of language and
communication difficulties and a continuum of effective support.
The needs in this socially disadvantaged area are great. Assessment at the start of the
initiative showed that more than a quarter of three- to four-year-olds in the schools’
nursery classes had standardised scores below 70 – that is, at a level that would meet the
criteria for a statement of special educational needs in many local authorities. 27 per cent
of a random sample of children in Key Stage 1 tested at this ‘severely delayed’ level,
compared with 2.7 per cent of children nationally. There was a similar picture in Key
Stage 2, with poor vocabulary emerging as a particular issue. Half the children tested had
significant difficulties on a naming task. At secondary level the incidence of difficulties
was even higher; a staggering 50 per cent of the random sample of thirteen-year-olds
assessed fell into the level that would meet statementing criteria.
Activities undertaken by the federation of schools included:
● employing a speech and language therapist seconded from the local service, to work
in a consultative way with staff;
● allocating responsibility for communication and language to senior members of
staff;
● building links with children’s centres, so as to provide universal and targeted support
to parents of young children in the area;
● putting in place permanent systems to assess all children and young people’s
language development, and track their progress over time;
● providing additional small group interventions delivered by trained teaching assis-
tants;
● undertaking audits of the extent to which school and setting environments were
communication-friendly;
● implementing classroom work to develop children and young people’s listening
skills and vocabulary; and
● enabling staff across the settings involved to undertake training on speech, language
and communication, including a specific Level 3 award.
The impact of the initiative has been remarkable. Reassessments undertaken by an inde-
pendent specialist show substantial increases in standardised scores on a range of language
tests after just one year. Both the primary schools involved have improved in Ofsted
inspections, achieving ‘good with outstanding features’ grades. External evaluation by the
University of Manchester (Ainscow et al., 2012) concluded that Talk of the Town has led
to significant changes in thinking and practices, commending the project as a powerful
approach for improving speech, language and communication among children and
young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and noting that ‘this in turn offers
encouraging possibilities for improving educational outcomes more generally, and in the
longer term, the life chances of young people’.
Summary
In this chapter we have looked at why children and young people’s language and communi-
cation development matters, and examined the multiple reasons for making it a setting and
school improvement priority.We have also considered the evidence that shows we can make
a difference.We do not have to simply bemoan children’s declining language skills; we can take
action to improve them, and see results.
The action we take, however, needs to be underpinned by an understanding of research and
theory. We need to know how language develops, and how the environments we provide at
home, in settings and in schools can best support that development.This is the theme of the
next chapter.
What do we know about how
2 to support language
development?
Language represents how we think and is the medium for learning. It is also what makes us
uniquely human. We come into life hard-wired to learn very quickly from the language we
hear around us. Even in the womb, a baby can distinguish speech sounds from non-speech
sounds. Soon after birth it will recognise its mother’s voice. Children learn to use as many as
13,000 different words by the time they are six, and this vocabulary will grow to around
60,000 for a college student.
But not all children and young people follow this path. Learning language is complex, so
much so that no one has yet been able to programme a computer to do what we as human
beings seem to do ‘by magic’. For some learners, the complexity of language acquisition pres-
ents real obstacles.
In this chapter we look at what research can tell us about language acquisition, and the
factors which support it.
The language development pyramid

In my time as Communication Champion I came across several important pieces of informa-
tion that helped me understand the process of language acquisition better.
One was a simple diagram: the language development pyramid widely used by speech and
language therapists (Figure 2.1). The diagram is helpful because it reminds us that what we
often see as ‘language’ (the speech that comes out of a child’s mouth) is actually only a small
part of a bigger picture. More important are the building blocks that underpin speech.
First of these is the ability to attend and listen to others, so that the child has input from
which they can learn. Second comes the capacity for play and interaction, which provides the
fundamental context in which language is learned. From these building blocks develops chil-
dren’s understanding of language (sometimes called receptive language), then their ability to
express themselves through talk (their vocabulary and sentence structures).
What this means is that practitioners working with children and young people of all ages
should not over-focus, as often happens now, on the clarity of the child’s speech – their ability
to manipulate speech sounds. More important questions to ask ourselves may be whether and
how far the child is able to listen and attend, to play and interact, to understand what we say to
them, and to express themselves with an age-appropriate vocabulary and language structure.
If, for example, we find that they have difficulty in listening and attending, that may be the
place to begin any support or intervention. In an early years setting, we might notice that a
child or group of children tend to flit from one thing to another with only a momentary focus
on an activity.We could start by creating an enticing small space with a few objects inside that
How to support language development 15
Speech
sounds
Talking
Understanding
Play and interaction
Attention and listening
Figure 2.1 The language development pyramid
really interest them, so as to encourage them to focus. In a primary or secondary classroom,

we might explicitly teach and practise the skills of listening.
If we find that children can focus but interact little with adults or other children, we might
in an early years setting start by getting down to their level, and simply watching and
commenting on their play. In a primary school we might work with a whole class on how to
strike up and sustain a conversation with a visitor to the school. In a secondary school we
might provide a social skills group.
If we find that children are not understanding well the language that they hear, it will be
an absolute priority to tackle this by teaching the vocabulary they do not understand, adjust-
ing the complexity of the language we use with them, and so on. They will not be able to
develop their own use of language (talking) unless we also work on their comprehension.
You will find strategies for addressing all the building blocks of the language development
pyramid in the chapters that follow.
Three elements of language

Another important and linked concept used by speech and language therapists, but also with
huge implications for education, is that there are three broad and different elements of
language:
● Receptive language: what we understand from the language of others.

● Expressive language: how we talk with others through increasingly sophisticated
language structures and expanded vocabulary.
● Pragmatic language: how we interact and have conversations with others, using and
understanding the subtleties of facial expressions, body movements, tone, volume, inflec-
tion, ideas about when to speak and for how long, ideas about what the other person
might want to know, and the ability to adopt different styles and conventions according
to who we are talking to or with.
16 How to support language development
What this means for all those concerned with children and young people’s language develop-
ment is that there is a need to focus learning opportunities on all of these three elements. For
example, it may be just as important to work with a group of teenagers on when and how to
switch between street talk and formal talk as it is to develop their grammar. It will be just as
important for a parent or early-years practitioner to read stories using rich patterns of intona-
tion in their voices as it is to point out the names of characters or objects in the book.
What really matters in early language development

The next important information I want to share here comes from a literature review on the
factors which support language acquisition, undertaken by the University of Dundee. This
report (National Literacy Trust, 2010) focuses on birth to three years of age, but research with
older children suggests that many of the key factors identified apply across the age range.These
key factors are:
● the amount of language spoken to a child;

● the extent to which adults cue in and respond sensitively to what a child is trying to
communicate;
● the way adults talk with children;
● reminiscing about events;
● sharing rhymes, songs and books;
● avoiding background noise;
● opportunities for interaction with other children; and
● continued use of the home language when children are growling up bilingual.
Let us look at each of these in turn.
Amount of language spoken to child

The sheer amount of language children hear is an important factor in their language devel-
opment. Research shows that children with advanced language skills have parents who talk
more, that talkative parents have talkative children, and that the earlier parents talk to their
children (that is, as small babies) the better will be their later language ability.
There is more to this, however, than just the volume of words used. Researchers have found
that the number of different word types used by parents is a key factor (Pan et al., 2005).
Complexity and breadth of vocabulary heard at home was found to make a significant differ-
ence to a child’s language development by three, and their literacy development later on.
The extent to which adults cue in and respond sensitively to what a

child is trying to communicate
Researchers have come up with a lovely metaphor to convey the optimal conditions for
language development.The metaphor is based on tennis – ‘serve and return’.The idea is that
from birth, babies and children reach out for interaction, first through babbling, facial expres-
sions and gestures, later by pointing at things to draw the adult’s attention to them, later with
speech. They ‘serve’; the adult must return their serve by responding sensitively to what the
baby or child is trying to communicate. If the baby or child does not get a response, or the
response is inappropriate, then the brain’s architecture does not form as it should. The child
may also begin to ‘serve’ less, reducing their spontaneous communication. This is a pattern
affecting practitioners working with children entering nursery or school, who may be quiet
and not interact with adults or other children because they have ceased to expect a response.
To begin with, this sensitive,‘attuned’ response to the child’s comes from parents and carers.
They in turn are biologically primed to be responsive communication partners, because of the
strong emotional bond they have with the child. The psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner has
put this perfectly:
In order to develop normally, a child requires progressively more complex joint activity
with one or more adults who have an irrational emotional relationship with the child.
Somebody’s got to be crazy about that kid.That’s number one. First, last and always.
(Bronfenbrenner, 1994)
Taking part in conversational turns – the ‘serve and return’ – does not just apply to parents,
however. As we will see later in this chapter, the extent to which practitioners in pre-school
and school settings make time to listen to a child, tune in sensitively to what they are commu-
nicating and respond in kind will also have a profound effect on the child’s language
development.
Taking time to interact can be difficult in busy settings. Research cited in the Bercow
review (Bercow, 2008), for example, found that only 40 per cent of children’s time in early
years settings was spent in interaction with other adults and children. In school classrooms, as
we will see later in this book, the opportunities for anything but the briefest of adult–child
interactions are even more limited.Yet if we are to support language development, we need to
find ways of creating more of these opportunities; however busy we are, we need to carve out
time to talk.
Television and DVDs are no substitute for interaction with real people. Research suggests
that children under the age of two years are unlikely to benefit from children’s TV in that,
while they might find it visually stimulating, they will find it more difficult to acquire new
vocabulary from that milieu than in face-to-face interactions (Close, 2004). Too much TV
viewing also seems to affect children’s attention and listening. Christakis et al. (2004) looked
at the pre-school TV viewing habits of seven-year-olds in the USA, finding a 10 per cent
increased risk of attention problems for every hour of television watched over and above the
average pre-school level.
The way adults talk with children

The National Literacy Trust (2010) research report provides evidence that adults who take
their lead from the child have a more positive effect on language development than those
trying to direct the child. For example, more rapid vocabulary development in children is
associated with adult input that picks up and follows the child’s focus of attention rather
than drawing the child’s attention to something different. So commenting on what the child
is doing is effective, as is responding to their utterances with what are called ‘expansions’
(adding to what they say) or ‘recasts’ (repeating back what they say in the right form but not
correcting their speech ).Table 2.1, adapted from one developed by the National Strategies,
shows examples of the types of adult response that support language development in the
early years.
Table 2.1 Adult responses which support language development

Child says/communicates Adult responds How does this response help?
Baby smiles when Dinner! (several times) Adult follows child’s focus of attention.
he sees dinner Gives child naming vocabulary and models
next stage of language development.
Milk Milk gone This is an example of an expansion.The adult
models a two-word sentence – the next stage
in language development.
’Poon Oh yes, a spoon . . . This is an example of a recast.
Daisy’s spoon The adult models the correct form.
I’ve maked a tunnel Yes, you’ve made a Expansion and recast.The adult models the
long, dark tunnel correct form and an extended vocabulary.
I need to make my I wonder what shape The adult tunes in to what the child is
track work you need it to be? focusing on, and asks an open question, which
models vocabulary and encourages the child
to think and respond.
Reminiscing about events

One particularly effective form of developing young children’s language is reminiscing about
events that the child and their ‘communication partner’ have jointly experienced.This provides
a motivating and meaningful context to move language on from describing the here and now
to encompass things that are not actually present. It also helps children develop ‘narrative’ skills
that research shows are very important throughout school.
I have become acutely aware of the power of reminiscence through my own recent expe-
rience of becoming a grandparent of twin boys. Early on, we put together in book format
photographs of experiences we had shared with the boys.The first,‘Mending the wobbly post
box’, describes in pictures the day the boys helped their grandfather mend the box we have at
the end of our drive for our mail to go in.The event involved real and toy toolboxes, a wheel-
barrow, two dogs and all sorts of exciting measuring, hammering and screwing – real and
pretend.
The next book is called ‘When Isaac got locked in the toilet’, and describes (again, without
text) how on Christmas Day one of the twins managed to turn the key in the lock and get it
firmly stuck when playing hide and seek, so that in the end Grandpa and Daddy had to kick
the door down. Some photographs we took at the time, others at a later dramatic re-enactment.
These books are the first thing the boys ask for when we visit, so over and over again we
go over the events – reinforcing the vocabulary, using the past tense, varying intonation with
dramatic voices, exploring cause and effect and feelings, telling a bit of the story then hand-
ing over to one or other of the twins for the next.Their language development has come on
in leaps and bounds as a result.
Sharing rhymes, songs and books

Another key factor that promotes language development is represented by activities such as
sharing rhymes (such as nursery rhymes), playing rhyming games, singing familiar songs and
sharing books.
Sharing books, particularly when it includes open-ended questions and encourages the
child to respond, is a particularly powerful means of enhancing both children’s spoken
language skills and literacy development.We know from research that that the amount of time
parents spent reading to their preschool children is strongly related to their language growth,
as is the number of picture books in the home.
The effects are apparent for older children too. Simply reading books out loud daily – two
or more times for the same book – and explaining some word meanings at each reading,
means ‘children can acquire eight to twelve word meanings per week at school – enough to
maintain average vocabulary gains during the primary years if such programmes can be
sustained over a school year’ (Biemiller, 2007).
Independent reading also develops language skills; indeed, for older children it is the prime
way in which they expand their vocabulary. Cunningham and Stanovitch (1991) found that
even after accounting for general intelligence and decoding ability, reading volume (amount
of time spent reading) contributed significantly and independently to vocabulary knowledge
for students aged 10 to 12 years.
Avoiding background noise

Young children are not able to attend to more than one thing at a time, so their language
development is held back in situations where they cannot focus on conversations and interac-
tion because they are distracted by background noise.
Important research in the Bristol area (Roulstone et al., 2011) has found that the amount
of time television (adult and child programmes) was on in the home when child was under
two predicted achievement at school entry.As this time increased, so the child’s score at school
entry decreased.
Television is not the only source of background noise. Many early years settings have a
policy of using nursery rhyme tapes to provide a friendly backdrop while children are play-
ing, but this too limits children’s ability to attend to what adults and other children are saying
when they are joining the child’s play.
Similarly, research examined in more detail in Chapter 4 shows that children and young
people at all ages find it difficult to learn in environments where there is a high level of back-
ground noise.
Opportunities for interaction with other children

Given the busy lives we lead, with not enough time to talk and listen, it is fortunate that
children do not acquire all their language from adults. Research shows that child-to-child
speech plays an important role in the development of language. Even very young children
(between one and two years old) will engage in sound play with others their age, and from two
years on interacting with other children provides them with rich opportunities for language
development: engaging in joint planning, negotiating conflicts, providing explanations, and
telling each other stories.
Continued use of the home language when children are growing up

bilingual
Research shows that children learning two languages develop language in the same way as
children using one language. But they need a secure foundation in one language if they are to
learn a second with ease.
A good summary of the evidence on bilingualism is provided in Educating Second Language
Children (Genesee, 1994). Genesee reminds us that:
● bilingual acquisition is a common and normal childhood experience;

● all children are capable of learning two languages in childhood;
● knowing the language of one’s parents is an important and essential component of chil-
dren’s cultural identity and sense of belonging;
● bilingual acquisition is facilitated if children have sustained, rich, and varied experiences
in both languages;
● proficiency in both languages is more likely if children have sustained exposure in the
home to the language that is used less extensively in the community (the language that is
used more widely will get support outside the home); and
● parents can facilitate bilingual proficiency by using the language they know best and by
using it in varied and extensive ways.
These findings have profound significance for educators. Learning to be a capable communi-
cator in the language of the home means that children develop the language structures, the
understandings about language and the vocabulary to which they can link the new learning
in the second language.They develop transferable skills. It also means that children have access
to the rich interactions with parents and other family members who may not be fluent in
English which, as we have seen above, promote linguistic development.
The most disadvantaged children are those who, because of an insistence on an English-
only approach, do not early on develop a proficiency in either English or their home language.
For them, the path to lifelong language learning will have been seriously disrupted.
The features of communication-supportive classrooms

One offshoot of the 2008 Bercow Review of services for children with SLCN (the review
which led to my role as Communication Champion) was substantial government funding for
a programme of research on speech, language and communication needs – the 2009–12 Better
Communication Research Programme.The programme was multi-stranded and one element
(the Communication Supporting Classrooms Project, reported in Lindsay et al., 2011) sought
to develop a tool which could capture the dimensions which promote oral language devel-
opment in classrooms.
First, the researchers undertook a comprehensive review of the literature. From this they
derived three dimensions (Figure 2.2): the language learning environment (the physical envi-
ronment and learning context), language learning opportunities (the what of learning – the
structured opportunities that are present in the setting to support language development) and
language learning interactions (the how of learning – the ways in which adults in the setting
talk with children). They then developed and trialled a classroom observation tool for
Reception and Key Stage 1 based on these dimensions. Extracts from the tool are shown in
Table 2.2.The full tool can be found at www.talkoftheschool.org.uk.
Of particular interest are the results from the trialling of the tool in classrooms – over a
hundred classrooms across the country. As Figure 2.3 shows, the lowest-scoring area in all age
groups was language learning opportunities. There were no significant differences between
LANGUAGE
LEARNING
LANGUAGE OPPORTUNITIES
LEARNING
ENVIRONMENT
r 1
LANGUAGE
LEARNING
LEARNING
INTERACTIONS
i
COMMUNICATION
C O M M U N IC A T IO N
SUPPORTING
S U P P O R T IN G CLASSROOM
CLASSROO M
Figure 2.2 Dimensions of a communication supporting classroom

Source: Lindsay et al. (2011)
Average p ro p o rtio n o f observations
0.8
YR
0.6
Yl
0.4 Y2
0.2
0
Environment O pp ortu nitie s Interactions
Figure 2.3 Language learning environment, language learning opportunities and language learning
interactions
Reception,Y1 and Y2 for language learning opportunities and language learning interactions,
but language learning environment showed a steep decline in quality over the year groups.
Classes in urban schools scored lower on language learning opportunities than rural schools.
Table 2.2 Extract from Better Communication Research Programme classroom observation tool
Dimensions Not seen Observed Reported at N/A Comments/
interview example
Language This dimension involves the structured opportunities that are present in the setting to
learning support language development
opportunities
Small group
work takes
place
Interactive
book reading
takes place
Children have
opportunities
to engage in
structured
conversations
with teachers
and other
adults
Children have
opportunities
to engage in
structured
conversations
with peers
(talking
partners)
Good quality
toys, small
world objects
and real/
natural
resources are
available
Musical
instruments,
noise makers
and puppets
are available
Children have
opportunities
to engage in
dressing-
up/role play
Small-group work facilitated by an adult was the most common form of language learning
opportunity observed, and interactive book reading the least – even though much research
shows that this is a powerful way of developing language.
The researchers also charted the types of adult interactions with children that they observed
in classrooms.The most common behaviours observed were using children’s names to get their
attention, use of natural gesture, acknowledging and confirming children’s contributions, and
using open questions.The least common were specific praise for listening skills, encouraging
turn-taking, and use of frames/scripts to scaffold children’s talk (e.g. in role-play areas).
Practitioners might want to use these findings to reflect on their own practice. Are there
language-learning opportunities that are missing, for example, and could be introduced? Are
there forms of interaction that could be changed?
Communication-supporting classrooms in secondary

schools
Research has not yet been done to map secondary schools’ language-learning environments,
opportunities and interactions through classroom observations like those undertaken for
Reception and Key Stage 1 in the Better Communication Research Programme. So it is not
yet possible to draw any conclusions about what secondary teachers typically do and don’t do.
Nevertheless, a tool similar to the primary classroom observation tool has been developed
at Sheffield University as part of the evaluation of a programme called Secondary Talk, which
is delivered by the children’s communication charity ICAN. The tool is grounded in the
research literature and can be found in the ‘Classroom approaches’ section of the Leadership
resources on www.talkoftheschool.org.uk.
The tool defines three key areas of a communication-supportive classroom: talking to and
communication with pupils, vocabulary teaching and general classroom practice. An extract
from the vocabulary teaching section is shown in Table 2.3.
Again, this tool can be used as the basis for reflection and development of any areas of prac-
tice that need to be strengthened in order to promote language and communication skills.
Summary
In this chapter we have mapped some of the factors that help promote children’s language
development.We have considered key features of communication-supportive classrooms, and
research that shows where there may be gaps in current practice. In the chapters that follow,
we will look at examples of good practice that demonstrate how some of the most common
gaps identified in the research might be addressed. These are grouped into a place to talk
(corresponding to language learning environments), a reason to talk and teaching talk (corre-
sponding to language learning opportunities), and finally support for talk (corresponding to
language learning interactions). First, we will hear about some case study schools whose prac-
tice exemplifies all of these key elements.
Table 2.3 Extract from secondary classroom observation measure

Section 3 :Teaching vocabulary
Skill Description of skill Rating Comments
1. The teacher specifies what the 1 2 3 4 5
new words to learn are
2. The teacher explicitly teaches 1 2 3 4 5
the new vocabulary before the
words are embedded into the
lesson (e.g. provides a definition/
focuses on the semantic features
or meaning(s) of the word)
3. The teacher focuses on the meaning 1 2 3 4 5
of the new words and links the new
words to other words/experiences
the pupils are already familiar with
4. The teacher focuses on the 1 2 3 4 5
phonological structure of the
new words word (i.e. what the
word sounds like and the sounds
in the word)
5. The teacher uses visual support 1 2 3 4 5
while teaching new vocabulary
(e.g. pictures, photographs, symbols)
6. The teacher repeats the new 1 2 3 4 5
vocabulary frequently
7. The teacher gives pupils opportunities 1 2 3 4 5
to practice the new words (e.g. saying
them before writing them)
8. The teacher encourages pupils to 1 2 3 4 5
ask questions and to seek clarification
about the new words
Source: Classroom observation measure from Clegg et al. (2011)
3 Stories from schools
The inspirational examples of effective work on language and communication which I saw in
schools and settings across the country in my time as Communication Champion all seemed
to have one thing in common: a multi-level approach. By this I mean that the schools and
settings invariably worked at three levels, or ‘waves’: everyday classroom curriculum practice,
‘catch-up’ interventions for groups of children, and more specialist interventions for those
with the greatest difficulties. In many cases the schools and settings also built strong partner-
ships with parents/carers in their vital role supporting their children’s language development.
Waves of intervention
This multi-level Wave 1/2/3 approach (see box below) will be familiar to most of us now, in
relation to literacy, maths and social and emotional learning. The effective settings I saw,
however, were unusual in also having a well-articulated map of what would happen for
communication and language at each of the three waves.
To check your own Wave 1 provision, you might like to ask yourself the following ques-
tions:
● Do all staff know how, at Wave 1, they can make the physical environment communica-
tion-friendly?
● Have they had training on how to ‘talk so kids will listen, and listen so kids will talk’?
● Do they build speaking and listening objectives into their everyday planning?
If not, this might be a good place to start in your school improvement planning. Good Wave
1 language environments and adult models will not only help the high numbers of children
with SLCN. They will also raise standards for the growing numbers of children learning
English as an additional language.They are the foundation of good practice; focusing on just
the additional help children might need at Wave 2 and 3 is rather like what a colleague called
‘the pudding without the main course’. Inclusive, high-quality everyday classroom teaching
should always be children’s main diet.
Wave 2 provision was, I found from my travels, often a significant gap.While most schools
have some sort of additional, time-limited ‘catch up’ provision for children with reading or
maths difficulties, for language there is often nothing between what happens in the everyday
classroom (Wave 1) and ‘he/she needs to see a speech and language therapist’.Yet in the best
practice I saw – described in the case studies below – schools and settings were meeting the
broad range of language needs through their own provision.
The ‘Waves’ model of intervention

The model starts from the premise that Wave 1 is the effective inclusion of all pupils in
high-quality learning and teaching. This should be the starting point for any school
reviewing their provision.
The model enables systematic planning of provision. The waves are ways of cate-
gorising provision, not pupils.
Wave 1
Wave 1 is high-quality inclusive teaching supported by effective whole-school policies
and frameworks, clearly targeted to all pupils’ needs and prior learning.
Wave 3
Specialist support for a few pupils
Wave 2
Non-specialist interventons for
some pupils to help them catch up
Wave 1
Inclusive quality first teaching in
the classroom for all pupils
Figure 3.1 Waves of intervention
Wave 2
Wave 2 is Wave 1 plus additional and time-limited interventions provided for some chil-
dren who need help to accelerate their progress, to enable them to work at or above
age-related expectations.This usually takes the form of a structured programme of small-
group support, carefully targeted and delivered by teachers or teaching assistants who
have the skills to help pupils achieve their learning objectives. This can occur outside
(but in addition to) whole-class lessons, or be built into mainstream lessons as part of
guided work. Critically, intervention support needs to help pupils apply their learning
in mainstream lessons. Intervention programmes need to be closely monitored to ensure
that they meet pupils’ needs.
Wave 3
Wave 3 is Wave 1 plus increasingly individualised programmes, based on independent
evidence of what works. Wave 3 describes additional targeted provision for a minority
of children where it is necessary to provide highly tailored intervention to accelerate
progress or enable children to achieve their potential. This may include one-to-one or
specialist interventions.
Stories from schools 27
This put them in a good position to meet recent changes to the SEN system, in which
schools are asked to provide good support for all children with additional needs, while
formally identifying fewer as having SEN. Adopting the three-Wave approach does this for
SLCN. The large group who are held back from achieving in school simply because of
restricted vocabulary or listening and attention problems can have their needs met through
carefully planned Wave 1 and 2 provision.This leaves a smaller group with long-term persist-
ent SLCN for whom the partnership between school, parents and speech and language
therapist will ensure good, if slower, progress.
CASE STUDY
Watercliffe Meadow primary school in Sheffield was the winner of the ‘Shine a light’
award for communication-supportive primary school of the year during the national
year of communication.
The head teacher and staff have a shared vision about the importance of meeting
children’s speech, language and communication needs – with good reason. In January
2010, 29 out of 39 children in the school’s nursery, due to start their reception year in
September 2010, had language levels of 18 months to 2 years 6 months on Early Years
Foundation Stage (EYFS) assessments.
The school’s strategy to tackle language needs includes working with parents/carers,
good systems for identifying SLCN and tracking children’s progress, and three waves of
provision.There is an absolute expectation that all parents/carers will come into school
for workshops when their children start nursery. The first workshop is aptly titled ‘It’s
good to talk’. It includes the experience of trying to talk with a spoon in your mouth,
to get across important messages about the use of dummies.
At Wave 1, the school uses some of the extra time they have bought in from the
Sheffield speech and language therapy service to provide Hanen and Makaton training
to all EYFS staff.The therapist has also modelled a number of different language inter-
ventions with groups (such as ‘Play and Say’). Staff have embedded these into their
everyday practice with all children.
The curriculum is rich with visits and experiential learning to promote talk. The
school uses approaches such as Pie Corbett’s Talk for Writing, Philosophy for Children
and Quality Circle Time to give children language structures that enable them to have
deep conversations and discussions on issues that are important to them.The school café
has ‘social seating’ to promote talk, and is open for parents at the start and end of the day,
and throughout the day for children.The playground is also seen as a key opportunity;
‘just as the teacher would structure conversation and debate in the classroom, we have a
team of “play leaders” (mainly teaching assistants) who initiate games that encourage
children to talk and interact’, head teacher Ian Read explains.
At Wave 2, there are well-planned interventions to provide extra help for children
who need it. In nursery and reception classes there are language groups that pre-teach
key vocabulary a week before the children are going to meet it in a new topic.A speech
and language therapy assistant runs speech groups, and the ‘Talking Partners’ small group
intervention devised in Bradford runs in the Reception year to Year 4.
All children have their language skills assessed by the end of their first term in nurs-
ery. Their language progress is then individually tracked as they move up through the
school. For example, the nursery assessment includes the British Picture Vocabulary
Scale, which is repeated as children reach their fourth and fifth birthdays. Every half-
term the speech and language therapist meets class teachers and goes through tracking
data, identifying strategies to support children with SLCN in class, or further interven-
tions. Children who are still having difficulties at the start of Y1 are prioritised for
therapy at Wave 3.
The impact of the school’s focus on communication has been noted by Ofsted:
‘Achievement has improved substantially. . . This is most notable in developing speech
and language in KS1, which is having a direct impact on attainment in reading and
writing.’
CASE STUDY
During the national year of communication, the Communication Council – the
national advisory group set up following the Bercow Review – marked the Hello
campaign by visiting Over Hall primary school in Cheshire, to hear about the remark-
able work of a cluster of schools (two special, ten primary and one academy) to tackle
speech, language and communication issues across the town of Winsford. The schools
purchase additional time from the local speech and language therapy service so that
school-based therapists can help staff embed approaches such as narrative therapy and
talking partners into their everyday teaching, assess children, and train and support desig-
nated teaching assistants to run intervention programmes. The schools also work with
ICAN, who have arranged large-scale training events for staff across the cluster. In the
early years, speech and language therapists and Children’s Centres provide parents with
a key ring of top tips for talk, with new tips added each week.There is also the ‘lollipop
challenge’, when parents try talking with a lollipop in their mouths, to help them under-
stand the impact of dummies.
Another cluster initiative is a research project, supported by Chester University, in
which children formed a team to find out what makes a good conversation, observed
conversations in classrooms, and now act as ‘Conversation Champions’ to coach and
support their peers.The children involved were not initially the most confident or skilled
communicators, yet when we visited they were able to make a superb presentation to
the Council.
CASE STUDY
At Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language College in Camden, staff have worked with the
local speech and language therapy service to improve pupils’ attainment by building their
communication skills. Work is at three levels: individual therapy for pupils with signifi-
cant difficulties, targeted small group work, and whole-school approaches to learning
and teaching in classrooms.All Year 7 pupils have been screened, and those needing help
with communication skills access six-week modules of small group work. There are
modules on active listening and social communication skills. Speech and language ther-
apists team-teach everyday lessons, working with one faculty at a time, and highlighting
ways of adapting questioning styles, supporting pupil listening skills and developing the
skills needed for group discussion. Science staff, for example, have focused on how to
improve explanations through clearer definitions of terms and increased repetition. Each
pupil and class involved is monitored carefully to evaluate the impact of the programme.
Evidence to date shows improved learning and behaviour. Pupils describe the benefits
as increased ability to listen and focus, and having an expectation now that they should
understand what they hear in a lesson.
CASE STUDY
At Haverstock secondary school in Camden, the three waves are well embedded. The
local speech and language therapy service works closely with the SENCO and learning
support team. A specialist SEN teacher runs groups for pupils with SLCN. Professional
development in the school is organised on a Teaching and Learning Communities
(TLC) model, in which ten teachers work together for a year to make changes to their
practice. The specialist SEN teacher leads a TLC that has adopted SLCN as a focus.
Subject teachers have experimented with increased visual support for lessons, and
adapted their own language.A consistent set of symbols has been introduced to illustrate
elements of a lesson (class discussion, listening, group work, paired talk, using computers
and so on).These appear on the whiteboard or sheets on students’ desks at the start of a
lesson, so that they know what to expect.
Speaking and listening skills are actively taught to all students, using games like ‘20
questions’ and ‘I went to Camden market and bought’. Posters remind students of core
skills like looking at the speaker, taking turns, and asking for clarification if you don’t
understand.Withdrawal groups for students with SLCN provide more intensive work on
these same skills.
CASE STUDY
Preston Manor, the winner of the Shine a Light award for communication-supportive
secondary school of the year during the national year of communication, described how
the English department worked with staff from the school’s speech and language
resource base to:
● develop speaking and listening lessons for all Year 7 and Year 8 students;
● provide training on adolescent speech, language and communication development
to all newly qualified teachers;
● implement a national year of communication campaign with a logo designed by
students, and a noticeboard displaying a communication focus of the week;
● devise a special lesson for all students, delivered in the spring term, in which they
explored what it means to have a voice;
● devise new citizenship lessons for Y7 – on the unwritten rules of communication,
constructive criticism, and negotiation and compromise;
● run targeted groups for expressive language, introductory social skills, vocabulary
enrichment and social skills/life skills, with information for all staff on the groups
available; and
● make a film about speech and language to be used in further staff training next year.
In addition, small group interventions were developed for expressive language strategies,
vocabulary enrichment and social skills.The school has a Targeted Groups working party
and a booklet for staff that communicates what groups are available for students. All
group materials (PowerPoint slides, agendas, games) are accessible to all school staff via
the intranet.
The school has also recently worked with the charity ICAN on its Secondary Talk
programme. One initiative has been to introduce whole-class Talk Targets in English
lessons, such as ‘Challenging other people’s opinions gently without starting an argu-
ment’, or ‘Knowing when not to add anything else to the conversation.’ At the end of
the lesson, pupils discuss whether they have met the target, and where they still need to
improve.
Making change happen in the early years

All the case study schools described above realised that developing a multi-level approach to
language and communication would involve changing some fairly entrenched adult behav-
iours. As adults and professionals, we have developed and practised particular ways of
communicating with children and young people over many years.These styles of communi-
cation become, in a sense, part of ‘how we are’, as automatic as driving a car becomes after an
equivalent period.
Changing established behaviour is difficult, for a teacher or any professional. It requires
effort and time, and a good deal more than just ‘going on a course’.What I saw working well,
therefore, was sustained professional development, in which training was followed up with the
chance to try out new ideas in the setting, with support, and reflect on the impact.
I was particularly impressed here by the Every Child a Talker programme, which has much
to teach us about how to change adult behaviours. Each pre-school setting involved had a ‘lead
practitioner’ whose role was to champion change across the setting. The lead practitioner
attended external training delivered by experts such as speech and language therapists. They
then worked alongside colleagues in their setting (or beyond) in a coaching role, and took part
in regular network meetings where they could share practice with other lead practitioners.
Staff filmed themselves with children, talked to colleagues about the video, made small changes
to their practice, then filmed themselves again.As one practitioner put it:‘The video was a real
revelation. It was clear I simply talked too much and didn’t give children enough time to
respond. I also asked far too many questions!’
Practitioners in many cases transformed the way they interacted with children. Instead of
interrogating them, they learned to make comments that open up conversation. So instead of
asking ‘Did you like the story?’, for example, they would say things like ‘Do you know, I really
liked the bit in the story when the girl found her dog . . .’, and wait for a response. They
learned, too, how to build language by repeating back what children say in expanded form, so
that if a child says ‘Teddy bed’ they might respond with ‘Yes,Teddy’s sleeping in the bed’.They
learned how to use ‘recasting’ – expanding the child’s language in correct and more mature
form so that if a child says, for example, ‘He hitted the ball and it went really far
and . . . and . . .’, the adult might reply ‘Yes, he hit the ball really hard and it went really far, so
he had to go and look for it’.
Another useful tool in Every Child a Talker was peer coaching – partnering up with
another practitioner and asking them to observe their colleague’s interactions with children
and provide feedback. Table 3.1 provides an observation tool to help with this, which I saw
used in Warrington. Here, the tool was used by a practitioner and their peer coach when
watching a video of the practitioner interacting with a child.The practitioner set the agenda
for the observation, and might say, for example,‘I want to know if I ask too many questions’.
After watching the video the coach would give their partner one piece of positive feedback,
then show them what they had noted on the observation form – a count of how many ques-
tions were asked versus comments made, examples of getting down to the child’s level to
communicate, examples of giving the child time to respond, and so on.
A similar model was used in Islington. The lead practitioners attended training on the
theory behind language development and adult–child interaction, watching film clips of them-
selves and using a tally sheet and list of prompts and questions to reflect with a partner on their
interactions with children. Each practitioner then identified an interaction strategy they
wanted to use more, and put this into practice with support from their partner. Later, they set
up the coaching model with other staff in their own settings. Results showed a significant
decrease in the numbers of pupils with delayed language.
Making change happen in the primary phase

Many schools and local authorities are now taking the learning from Every Child a Talker
into Key Stage 1 and 2, with Communication Champions in primary schools, and the use of
peer observation and coaching. Table 3.2 provides an observation tool that might be useful
here.
A successful model of making change happen was used by Foley Park Primary in
Worcestershire (a runner up in the Shine a Light ‘Hello’ communication-friendly school of
the year award). Here, just one new strategy was introduced to staff each half term. Staff would
have a short input from a speech and language therapist on – say – the ‘ten second rule’ (wait
ten seconds after asking a question before expecting an answer). They would then be
supported by a school-based member of staff leading on the project, who might observe them
in class and provide feedback. Another half-term was spent on special ways of identifying key
topic vocabulary (‘Goldilocks’ words – not too easy, not too hard, but just right; see Table 6.1
in Chapter 6), teaching these words using a multisensory approach and then applying and
reviewing them. Another half-term focused on visual support; staff could drop in on the
school’s well-equipped Chatterbox room for practical help with adding pictures, photos and
symbols to classroom resources.
Action research is another useful tool I saw used to promote changes in behaviour.At Over
Hall primary school in Cheshire, children were involved in researching what happened in
classrooms and presenting their findings. They found that children often didn’t understand
what the teacher was saying. They also reported that ‘We – the children – are very good at
talking but not so good at listening.’ From this came a staff development programme on how
to modify adult language (‘chunking’ instructions, using visual supports and so on), and work
in classes on listening skills. At the end, children repeated their classroom observations and
found positive changes.
Table 3.1 Every Child a Talker: reflecting on practice in Warrington
Play Never Some- Often All the

times time
Does the practitioner:
Sit where they can easily make eye contact?
Let the children choose the toy/activity?
Join in with the children’s play?
Communicating Never Some- Often All the

times time
Does the practitioner:
Use appropriate eye contact and facial
expression?
Adapt spoken language level according to

situation?
Give children enough time to talk/wait for

them to start the interaction?
Make comments on the child’s actions?
Model correct speech/language?
Expand/build on the child’s sentences and

ideas?
Make positive comments/give specific praise?
Use more comments than questions/

instructions?
Ensure an equal child–adult balance of

conversational ‘turns’?
Time to Talk, Routledge © Jean Gross, 2013

Table 3.2 Reflecting on practice: a peer coaching model for school staff
Question Answer Comment

Did I talk more than the pupils – how much of
the time was spent in teacher talk? Pupil talk?
How many questions did I ask?
How many open/closed questions?
How many complex sentences (with connectives)

did I use?
How long did I typically wait before expecting
a reply to questions?
Did I pause between instructions or chunks
of speech?
Did I expand/build on pupils’ sentences and ideas?
Did I ask them to tell me if they hadn’t

understood?
Did I actively teach important new vocabulary –
not just by explaining it once?
A group of schools in Croydon used another powerful strategy – lesson study – to achieve
sustained change in classrooms.
CASE STUDY
Talk for Learning was an initiative involving Croydon schools, local authority consult-
ants and outside experts from the Thinkwell organisation. Each school nominated a lead
or leads who took part in training sessions, beginning with a two-day launch event and
training on how children develop speaking and listening skills, using talk to promote
thinking, and on the lesson study model.
Participants then had a day in school to plan a staff meeting about the initiative and
to plan their first lesson study on a chosen focus – for example, helping children develop
questioning skills.
In lesson study, a pair or group of staff (such as phase leader and class teacher) plan a
lesson together. Staff observe the children and each other over the course of the lesson,
provide feedback and reflect together on the learning. Crucially, lesson study asks child-
ren for their views on the lesson and how successful the teaching was.
Teachers taking part in the initiative also had the opportunity to pay a visit to observe
a leading teacher or Advanced Skills Teacher at work. They met regularly to share the
learning from their lesson studies, and take part in further training – for example in using
drama, and the ‘Talk for Writing’ approach.
The schools involved used before and after observations to evaluate the impact of
their work. The results showed that this way of working was really changing the way
teachers interacted with their classes.
At Coulsdon Church of England primary school, for example, staff focused on devel-
oping children’s skills in paired and group discussion, reflecting on what others have said,
and questioning skills. One lesson study used the school’s enterprise focus as a starting
point. Children analysed what makes a pitch for funding for a new product effective,
using film from Junior Dragons’ Den, then worked in mixed ability groups of three to
devise their own pitch to a bank manager.
Another lesson study asked children to place themselves on an ‘opinion line’ to show
their response to a news report that PE might be taken out of the school curriculum.
They then listened and responded to others’ points of view and used the opinion line
again at the end of the lesson to show whether their opinions had changed.
Staff drew on the training they had experienced to try out new strategies in the
lessons – like the ‘Because Bar’, which encourages children to explain the reasons for
their point of view, and ‘Number 1–5’, which allocates each child in a group discussion
a number, so that the teacher can choose a number and that child will feed back on their
group’s discussion to the whole class.
Change was measured by auditing the percentage of teacher talk and pupil talk over
a series of lesson studies. Findings showed that teacher talk decreased from 35 to 25 per
cent, and pupil talk rose from 65 to 75 per cent. Pupils reported changes (‘Talk for
Learning has made me less chatty, made me think about my talk in the classroom’, said
one Year 3 pupil), as did parents ( ‘I’ve noticed that Scott has started to say things like ‘I
can see what you’re saying but . . .’ and ‘I can see what you mean, but what about . . .’ and
‘What do you mean by. . . ?’).
Making change happen in the secondary phase

At the other end of the age range, ICAN, the children’s communication charity, have devel-
oped an interesting model of change for secondary schools. Secondary Talk is a whole-school
approach linked to self-evaluation. It enables departments or individuals to choose a focus,
then undertake a short self-study module (like ‘Tweaking teacher talk’, or ‘Making homework
more effective’), before making and reviewing small changes to their classroom practice.
Secondary Talk is a coaching and mentoring model, rather than training, and that is what
makes it effective. It is also flexible, recognising that those within the school are the experts
about that school and about where the windows of opportunity for change might be.
External evaluation by the University of Sheffield has shown significant impact.The major-
ity of school staff taking part were independently observed to make positive changes to their
classroom practice by using more appropriate teacher talk, and actively helping pupils learn
new vocabulary. Following Secondary Talk, pupils felt that teachers were easier to understand
and used more visual support strategies which helped their learning. Staff reported improve-
ments in learning and behaviour.
CASE STUDY
Kat Wilkes,Assistant Director of English/Literacy Coordinator at South Wolverhampton
and Bilston Academy, describes how her school engaged with Secondary Talk. Step 1
involved staff in collectively identifying what they saw as the key language needs for
their students, and choosing a relevant Secondary Talk ‘Standard’ to work towards.
Drawing on the Secondary Talk resource manual, with advice from an ICAN consult-
ant and bearing in mind what was workable in school where there was always the risk
of initiative overload, Kat then chose a small number of approaches for staff to try out
and evaluate on an action research basis.These included developing students’ vocabulary,
and helping them learn to work effectively in groups.
Departments went away and made laminated ‘placemats’ for students’ desks, with key
vocabulary, and subject-specific and generic frames to support talk and writing (how to
argue a point, how to give an explanation, how to write a letter). Students worked to
‘talk targets’ when working in groups – taking turns to speak, making sure everyone gave
their opinion, asking each other questions, using the key words related to the topic – and
pupils identified as observers would use a Secondary Talk tick box and comments chart
(Table 3.3) to record whether each group member was meeting the target.
Table 3.3 Secondary Talk tick box and comments chart

Talk Targets Pupil 1 Pupil 2 Pupil 3 Pupil 4 Observer
comments
Take turns to speak?
Make sure everyone said

their opinion?
Ask each other questions?
Use the key words relating

to the topic?
Schemes of work were modified to include opportunities for discussions using talk
targets, scaffolding talk with talk frames, and use of placemats with key vocabulary.
Another interesting piece of action research focused on improving the way students
were asked to reflect after incidents of poor behaviour or conflict. Previously, students
used a sheet of paper with a couple of headings in which they wrote their account of
events.This worked well for verbally fluent pupils, but penalised those who found it hard
to articulate their thoughts. Staff wanted to scaffold the process for these students by
giving them a visual frame (an ‘Incident Narrative’ from www.makesensetraining.co.uk;
see also Chapter 7 for another possible model) to help them describe what happened,
what the feelings were, what happened and what might have happened if they had made
other choices.
CASE STUDY
The Spinney Centre is a secondary provision in Coventry, for boys with behavioural,
emotional and social difficulties.Auditing the boys’ needs, staff found that two-thirds had
some sort of communication difficulty. Secondary Talk enabled them to evaluate current
practice and make changes. Lesson observations by external consultants showed that
teacher talk predominated in class. Staff then ‘asked ourselves why we felt the need to
fill the silences’ and realised that the answer lay in their own fear of things getting out
of control if they did not fill every minute. Talk was being used as a way of managing
behaviour. Staff also observed that they tended to ask students closed questions they
could easily answer in very few words, so as to avoid putting them in a position of anxi-
ety – again, with the probability that this would lead to behaviour problems.
Observations showed that students looked to staff to negotiate their group and pairs
tasks; they weren’t able to work independently in any sort of group. ‘Many of the boys
have low self-esteem and fragile confidence and rely on others to speak for them.
Overall they had very little verbal independence in lessons and this needed to change’,
said head teacher Annie Tindale.
Bit by bit, staff introduced changes like teaching students to work in small groups, and
using the ‘ten second rule’ – waiting ten full seconds after asking a student a question,
in order to give them time to process the information. Staff were anxious about this, but
students found it very helpful. One exceptionally quiet teenager paused for a whole
minute before answering a question, but got it correct.
The majority of school staff who took part in Secondary Talk were independently
observed to make positive changes to their classroom practice as a result of their action
research. They talked less, gave students more thinking time, got better at facilitating
more supportive general classroom discussion, made more use of visual support and
introduced more structured group work.
Accreditation
Schools and settings have, I found, made change happen most effectively when they are
enabled to work towards a goal. Useful here is the Communication Trust’s framework of
competencies in supporting language and communication (available at
www.communicationhelppoint.org.uk), which can be completed online, and allows anyone
working with children and young people to evaluate their skills and knowledge about
communication.They can then identify areas where they want to develop. In addition, whole
settings can access the online assessment with a designated group number and collectively
assess their developmental training needs.The competencies are divided into stages: universal
(the basic skills and knowledge that everyone working with children and young people should
have) through to enhanced, then specialist, then extension (the specialised learning around
speech, language and communication needs required by someone working or studying at a
post-graduate level).
Working towards an actual external award or accreditation can be very powerful in driving
change. ICAN’s Early Talk, Primary Talk and Secondary Talk are examples of such accredita-
tion, with standards to work towards at three levels – universal, enhanced and specialist.
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engineering in a country as vast as ours. For finding a road and for
building it with the least possible expense and the greatest possible
efficiency MacLeod may have had an equal, though I have never met
the man who met him. MacLeod certainly has had no superior.
The winter of 1906-7 was one of the worst in western railroad
history. It didn’t linger in the lap of spring; it pushed the spring out of
its place. Long after the time for the singing of birds had come, an
extra-special sleetstorm covered one section of track with so thick a
glaze of ice that the only way to get trains over it was to pickaxe the
ice from the rails.
Immigration was at the flood that spring. Cities and towns
everywhere were preparing for big construction programmes.
Something of a blockade was inevitable; but a breakdown in one part
of our organization let us into more trouble than honest men deserve.
An effort was made to clear up a congestion that was worsening
every day, by picking out from as many congested sidings as possible,
cars that were most urgently wanted, and making up special trains to
meet special urgencies. The result was congestion worse congested,
because it took longer to segregate the cars required than to move
the whole multitude. Our bill for per diem charges on foreign cars
held by us was appalling.
When our interior trouble was fully understood, primarily as the
outcome of Mr. Mann and the third vice-president going to Winnipeg
to probe the situation, we changed the managerial method, put our
superintendents and men on what may be called a course of inter-
emulation; with ten days as the time set for abolishing the blockade.
In eight days all was clear, through a zeal on the part of the whole
staff which was beyond praise, and almost beyond belief. I never saw
such a mess, or such a recovery. In fourteen days the Northern Pacific
at Emerson was shouting for us to dam the tide of empties that was
flowing back to their American owners.
This blockade precipitated the appointment of M. H. MacLeod as
general manager, without relinquishing his other post. There was, of
course, some outside surprise at so unusual a fusion of offices. It was
even said that MacLeod hadn’t force of character enough—by those
who did not know what can come from the lone sheiling of the
Hebrides. But MacLeod was all there, all the time and all the way. He
was sometimes like electricity—hardly noticeable till you touched him.
He seldom kicked; but when he did there was no misunderstanding
the stroke.
Shortly before he died Sir William Mackenzie was asked what he
thought of the revised Toronto viaduct scheme. He replied that of
course it should go through, because it was MacLeod’s; and being
MacLeod’s the saving of millions, which it showed on paper, would be
a saving of millions on the contract. Sir William’s latest estimate of
MacLeod was only in keeping with long experience. He may not have
kept them as Major Rogers kept the C.P.R. cheque, but he was given
more than one letter by Sir William, signing as President of the
Canadian Northern, authorizing him to spend on betterments sums
running beyond seven figures, on his sole discretion and authority.
Similar instances of executive confidence may be recorded elsewhere,
but I scarcely think so.
The quality of the railway pathfinder is essentially the same
whether he walks alone, in the depth of winter, on Saskatchewan ice,
looking for a place to build a steel bridge a thousand feet long, or
whether he is poking around a waterfront littered with shipping
warehouses, and considering how to get twenty trains an hour into
and out of a station. It works with a seeing eye and a building hand.
MacLeod has them both. He is in his own class; but he is of a great
company of engineers to whom ungrudging tribute is richly due, and
too seldom paid.
C H A P T E R X I V.
Reciting events, the Great War being chief, which destroyed the
Canadian Northern.
N
othing in North American transportation quite equals the rise and
fall of the Canadian Northern. Those who were intimately
associated with its twenty-six years’ history scarcely realized the
extent to which Mackenzie and Mann were unique among the
roadmakers of all the continents. For the accumulation of wealth, and
also for the domination of railway systems of huge mileage, James J.
Hill was in a class by himself. He died worth sixty million dollars—
without a will. He obtained vast riches through the iron ore deposits of
the Mesaba range, in the Minnesota hinterland of Lake Superior—there
was nothing like it in Canada. His railways connected Chicago with the
cities and plains of the United States northwest, even to the Pacific
Ocean. His ships sailed to Nippon and far Cathay.
Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann made no enormous
fortunes out of the railway they built from Atlantic to Pacific
tidewaters. But they performed a feat which no American combination
ever achieved. Their enterprise was more original than anything which
Hill carried to profitable result; for they began beyond where Hill, and
even the Canadian Pacific, had left off. Indeed, Hill pulled out of
Canadian railway building rather than share responsibility for the first
line on Superior’s northern shore.
Mackenzie and Mann’s original railway carried settlement a hundred
miles north of the line beyond which implement manufacturers had
refrained from extending their credit. They went, not only where
railway obligations had not gone, but where, aforetime, railway
obligation was afraid to venture. They looked ultimately to great
fortune for themselves—there has never been any pretense to the
contrary. But they had in them infinitely more than a lust for pelf. The
first justice that is done to these two men is a frank recognition of the
pioneering, constructive passion which made of them great Canadians.
Ambition that was all self-sacrifice never braced a continent with
steel. The money changers do not open the purse of Fortunatus to
Simon Pure altruists. Railways must be carried to completion on the
financial engines that are available to mundane men. The Canadian
Northern was brought into being because the time had come when
more than the C.P.R. was needed in Western Canada. It is not good
for a railway to be alone in so broad a land. The combination that had
grown out of a contest over the ownership of a corral-full of mules
away up in the Selkirks was the ordained instrument to prove that an
impossible piece of work could be done.
Sir William Mackenzie, in his favourite car, the Atikokan—which was
bought while it was being used by Admiral Dewey on his triumphal
tour—was discussing with a guest one night in 1905 the prospects of
the Canadian Northern, which had not yet reached Edmonton. His
inveterate optimism then believed that Hudson Bay would be reached
within three years. Asked if he had ever been to the Bay he answered:
“No; I haven’t been to Sao Paulo, either; but I’ve taken a million
dollars out of there within the last three years.”
He told of having received an offer from the Grand Trunk to buy the
Canadian Northern at the time the Grand Trunk Pacific scheme was
brewing, and of refusing it, though there would have been millions of
dollars in it for himself and his partner.
“Why didn’t you sell out?” his guest asked.
“I like building railroads,” was the simple, truthful, profound answer.
The money-grubber doesn’t talk that way. He doesn’t act as
Mackenzie and Mann always acted.
Many of us, who never had personal control of millions of dollars,
and to whom a moderate fortune is a hunger to be eagerly appeased,
and a divinity to be constantly adored, cannot conceive of the
possession of money being a mere adjunct to those who do great
things through their capacity for changing other people’s money into
enormous vehicles of commerce.
The money-making side of Mackenzie and Mann, the Canadians,
was, if you like, what the penchant for fussing with detectors and
amplifiers is to the radio fan. He’s after the result—the miracle of the
perfectly reproduced voice, singing a thousand miles away. He cannot
get his result by being indifferent to the peculiarities of the squeal that
precedes the tone.
Mackenzie and Mann could not have built and acquired
approximately ten thousand miles of railways by preaching altruism
and despising the money market. They could not have done it if their
sole propulsion came from love of money for money’s sake.
As construction contractors they would have piled up huge profits;
and would have got out when the getting was good. As this is written
the Mackenzie estate is being realized for the heirs. Without knowing
anything of the details, I think it can be predicted that the popular
notion that Sir William piled up fabulous wealth out of the
opportunities furnished by Government guarantees, and construction
contracts let to himself at his own price, will prove to be as vain as
some of the other current delusions about him.
From time to time, base and baseless charges were made to the
effect that moneys raised in London for railway construction were used
for other purposes, and that excessive contractors’ profits were
selfishly provided for. Two grosser libels were never perpetrated. The
first is merely absurd. The second is almost equally so when the costs
of construction per mile of the Grand Trunk Pacific and National
Transcontinental and the Canadian Northern are compared.
It has already been suggested that the Canadian Northern was not
conceived as a transcontinental railway, with the beginning of the Lake
Manitoba Railway and Canal Company’s line between Gladstone and
Dauphin. The scheme, as a scheme, growed, with Topsy-like
inevitability. Before it could finally prosper it was perforce surrendered
to its chief guarantors by its authors. It is not necessary to wait for
Time’s final justification, in dollars and cents, before the nation
understands its essential magnificence—and also the extent to which
another sort of ambition in the political and railway worlds contributed
to its temporary bafflement.
To judge it broadly, and surely, the first requisite is an appreciation
of the prairie factor in any Canadian transcontinental railway. The
reports and maps of forty-five years ago show the C.P.R. main line
originally projected across territory, every mile of which, between the
Red River and the ascent to the Yellowhead Pass was first given a
railway by Mackenzie and Mann. In less than twenty years the
Canadian Northern, developed from a pioneer piece of track, operated,
in all departments, by a force of fourteen, into a system which, during
the war, was running trains into centres of one thousand population
and over, representing ninety-seven per cent. of the populations of
Manitoba and Saskatchewan and ninety per cent. of the population of
Alberta.
In 1915-16, the traffic year of the most prolific crop the West had
ever grown, the Canadian Northern hauled 132,000,000 bushels of
grain to Port Arthur from the prairies. We were then in the pinch of
the constriction which finally brought about national ownership; and
insufficiency of equipment caused us to lose a good deal of our share
of the grain traffic.
Even so, although the C.P.R. had every advantage, including its
double track all the way between Winnipeg and Fort William, and
nearly all the way from Winnipeg to Moose Jaw, we hauled 31.1 per
cent. of the total, against the C.P.R.’s 56.3 per cent., and 12.6 per
cent. of all other lines.
Deferring allusion to the controversial question of the wisdom of
projecting two new transcontinental railways in the first decade of this
century, it is worth while glancing at the Canadian Northern’s relation
to the growth of the nation’s business as affected by the construction
of the sections north of the Great Lakes, and across the mountains to
Vancouver.
Each of these sections is a timbered area; and each has contributed
materially to the distinction earned by the Canadian Northern, of being
the greatest Canadian carrier of forest products. Thirty per cent. of the
capacity of all the lumber mills of Canada was on Canadian Northern
lines. Thirty-two per cent. of the traffic created by Canadian lumber
mills was water-borne; so that the C.N.R. competed for just about half
of the rail-hauled lumber business of the country. Taking 1915-16 as a
representative year, here are the figures of lumber hauled by the three
great Canadian systems:
Canadian Northern 3,883,739 tons
Canadian Pacific 3,832,163 ”
Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific 2,297,925 ”
During 1917, the last year before nationalization, we hauled 3,850
cars, or eighty-five million feet, of lumber up the Fraser Canyon and
over the Yellowhead Pass. The timber on territory tributary to the
Canadian Northern main line in British Columbia was then figured at
30,380,000,000 feet; and on Vancouver Island, between Victoria and
Alberni, at 25,000,000,000 feet.
While my own work was in the operating and traffic departments, it
was, of course, concerned with the fundamental features of the
system as a whole. Grades are as much a part of traffic as cars and
cargoes. When we began to emerge as a potential transcontinental,
what was the outlook for ultimate prosperity, so far as it would be
governed by ease of operation, and the magnitude of population to be
served?
Ease of operation is mainly a matter of low grades. The Canadian
Northern main line from Atlantic tidewater to Pacific tidewater has
better grades than all the other railways on the continent. The
mountain sections, of course, are the most eloquent of grading
advantage or disadvantage to the railways crossing them. The
importance of low grades between the prairies and the Pacific was
immensely enhanced by the Panama Canal, which has already made
Vancouver a great grain port. The Canadian Northern maximum climb
between Edmonton and Vancouver is four-tenths of one per cent., or
twenty-six feet per mile. The Grand Trunk Pacific grades are almost
equally good, but as they lead to Prince Rupert, 400 miles farther than
Vancouver from the canal, the balance of advantage is obvious, as
between the two junior routes.
The C.P.R. was first projected to reach the Pacific through the
Yellowhead Pass, which is by far the best for railway purposes
between Mexico and the Yukon. But the main line location being
changed, two climbs over summits were necessary before the long
descent to the ocean down the Thompson and Fraser rivers could
begin—over the Rockies, at the Kicking Horse, and over the Selkirks,
by the pass Major Rogers discovered, forty-three years ago. The
maximum altitude reached by the Canadian Northern is 3,700 feet.
The maximum of the C.P.R. is 5,332 feet, with a drop to 2,443, and a
second rise to 4,340 feet.
The maximum Canadian Northern grade eastward is seven-tenths of
one per cent. The C.P.R. maximum is two per cent.—it was over three
during thirty years of operation. Put another way, by the time you are
twenty miles beyond Calgary on the C.P.R. you are as high as the
highest summit of the C.N.R., and on the C.N.R., instead of having to
rise a further 1,600 feet, and then to climb in a few miles, 1,900 feet
more, there is only a negligible second rise to get over the watershed
of the Canoe and the North Thompson rivers, whence the road to the
Pacific is downhill.
The contrast between the Canadian Northern and the more
southerly American roads is even greater. The Union Pacific
switchbacks to a maximum of 8,200 feet, and the Sante Fé to 7,421
feet.
The difference made by the grades to operating costs can be judged
by the difference in the load which an engine can pull up a four-tenths
and a one per cent. grade. Up twenty-six feet to the mile—four-tenths
—a 190-ton locomotive will haul 3,768 tons. Up sixty-feet per mile—
one per cent.—she will drag only 1,780 tons. The disparity increases
with the acclivity.
The Canadian Northern, then, had the elements of a great
permanent success, given enough tributary population creating traffic
to earn expenses and fixed charges during the earlier operating years.
That there was calamitous overbuilding of Canadian railways nobody
will deny. To attempt to fix responsibility for it might invite a certain
degree of political controversy which no lover of a quiet life desires.
This is a strictly moral tale, and a few facts will point out their own
moral.
In 1904, when a general election solidified the Grand Trunk Pacific
legislation, the Canadian Northern had already in existence 2,500
miles beyond Port Arthur, all aiding the Western development which
was absolutely vital to Canada’s future. This railway was altogether a
native growth, the executive force in which had been concerned with
Western railway construction since before the first locomotive entered
Winnipeg. There was no imposition from without—no grandiose
scheme intended to dazzle an electorate, or fill a Parliament with
swelling pride. The Canadian Northern grew in Time’s own fruitful
womb; and struck its roots deep and wide all over the Western land.
From the point of view of the prairie provinces’ development, the
nicer problem of the wisdom of hastening the Superior and Mountain
sections may be put aside momentarily by this question: “What would
be the relative positions of the two junior railways if their revenues
depended solely on traffic originating between the Great Lakes and
the Great Mountains?”
In different terms, the question is: “How do the old Canadian
Northern and the old Grand Trunk Pacific compare, twenty years after
the Grand Trunk Pacific was launched, as servants of the country,
which is the only reason for their existence?”
Every commercial traveller who knows the West, and every
superficial observer of the flow of grain to the Lakes’ head, is aware
that years and years before the G.T.P. hauled its first car of wheat into
Fort William, the Canadian Northern avalanche of grain converged
upon Port Arthur from branches which appeared upon the map like the
fingers of a hand.
In the year of the first G.T.P. car’s arrival at Fort William the
Canadian Northern earned nearly twenty-one million dollars. If the
Canadian Northern had remained a prairie road, doing business only
between the Lakes and Mountains, it would never have been in Queer
Street, but would have more than paid for operating costs, fixed
charges and betterment requirements out of revenue, because it was
the West’s own product to meet the West’s own needs.
Neither as a prairie road, nor as a prairie-and-mountain road has the
Grand Trunk Pacific ever earned its operating expenses. The only
section which has shown more earnings than operating expenses, is
the line between Winnipeg and Fort William, which was built as the
National Transcontinental. That result has only been possible to this
piece of line because Canadian Northern traffic is handed to it at
Winnipeg, under the co-ordinating arrangements without which for
many years to come the Grand Trunk Pacific, which was built at
unprecedented expense per mile for a pioneer road, would resemble
nothing so much as the seven lean kine of Joseph’s immortal dream.
To a large extent the former National Transcontinental is being used as
the old Canadian Northern harvesters’ second track between Winnipeg
and Lake Superior.
Why, then, did the Canadian Northern fall, and two great builders
with it? The obvious but misleading guess is that the prosperous
middle was bankrupted by the lean and voracious Montreal-Port Arthur
and Edmonton-Vancouver ends. Ambition o’er-leaped itself and met
the fate excessive leaping invites. The man who is a better biter than
chewer will always choke. The guess and comment are plausible—
much more plausible than what I believe is the true explanation of the
debacle of Mackenzie and Mann, which was, finally, the war. There
were other contributing causes, of course, but the real overwhelmer
was Armageddon.
Few men seemed to realize in 1911 and 1912 that the period of
swift expansion which had given prosperity to all sorts of businesses in
Canada was about to conclude. Hindsight is proverbially better than
foresight. It is easy, even for statesmen, to realize now, that there had
been too little increase in the basic productions of agriculture, and too
much addition to manufacturing and other plants which could only
flourish permanently on a constantly expanding fruition of the soil,
along with steady development of forest and mining industries.
Sir George Paish, editor of “The Statist”, after a tour of Canada
before the war, said that we had furnished ourselves with plants
capable of taking care of three times our then production from natural
resources. Immigration was flowing too much to cities and towns. Free
land was becoming comparatively scarce, and even in the prairie
country sixty-five per cent. of the immigration was keeping off the
farms. Early in 1912 the Government was warned in its Special
Commissioner’s Report on Immigration that the basis of its
immigration policy should be changed so as to deflect public money
into scientific land settlement.
In the fall of 1912 signs of an approaching constriction of C.N.R.
earnings began to appear. The Superior and Mountain sections were
under way. The London money market, partly through conditions
caused by wars in the Balkans, was not as responsive as before.
Dominion and Provincial Government guarantees did not now ensure
the immediate sale of securities, at the most favourable prices. In the
spring of 1914 application to Parliament for special assistance became
imperative.
We had been able to meet all fixed charges out of revenue every
year since 1897. Connection of Toronto with Port Arthur around the
north of Lake Superior had been made on the first of January. But,
with a diminishing immigration and a slackening of employment in the
cities, it would take time to win for this part of the system between
older and younger Canada, a traffic commensurate with the proportion
of the total trade between East and West which the Canadian
Northern had created. Even to-day, the old Canadian Northern
originates heavy East-and-West business for other railways.
The British Columbia lines, which were being constructed at a speed
and an economy that was possible only because of the long
experience of engineers like M. H. MacLeod and T. H. White, were
bound to cost more than the amounts of any Government guarantees.
It had become necessary to finance some construction by short term
notes, at a higher interest than guaranteed securities called for.
Application was, therefore, made to the Government at Ottawa for
guarantees amounting to forty-five million dollars, to enable the road
to be finished between Quebec and Vancouver.
Sir William Mackenzie, who always handled financial business at
Ottawa, was turned down flat by the Government. But, as Sir Donald
Mann says, a refusal never meant any more to him than a spur to
persistence in advocating his cause. After much labour in placing the
facts where they could be appreciated, the aid was promised. Against
considerable opposition, in the late spring the legislation was passed
and Sir William went to England to raise the money.
He succeeded in placing a substantial proportion of the securities
with a great financial house. A first issue of three and a half million
pounds was taken by the public, less than three weeks before the
formal declaration of war against Germany. The financial house did not
repudiate its bargain, but there was no prospect of raising money in
London for Canadian railway construction in August, 1914, or
subsequently, during the war. Indeed, the British Government
prohibited any issue of any description from any of the Dominions,
while hostilities lasted.
It would have been unwise to stop work in Canada because of a war
the duration of which was not foreseen. Though we were restricted in
pace, construction went on, the money for which was obtained in New
York, through more short term notes, with the securities unsold in
London as collateral. Guaranteed as the collateral securities were, they
could only realize about sixty per cent. of their face value. This and
the higher rate of interest, had the effect of considerably raising the
cost of capital required for construction.
When, to inaugurate the linking of Quebec and Vancouver by the
Canadian Northern, an excursion of Parliamentarians from the St.
Lawrence to Burrard Inlet was arranged in the fall of 1915, it was clear
that New York must be permanently drawn upon, if the situation,
believed to have been finally saved at midsummer, 1914, were not to
descend into disaster.
Sir William Mackenzie, at an age when chiefs of the C.P.R. retire on
their highly deserved pensions, faced a heavier task than anything
that confronted Stephen, Smith, or Van Horne in the C.P.R.’s most
trying period. The Canadian Government, with London still an
inexhaustible reservoir, was the C.P.R.’s last and safest resort.
Mackenzie saw a world war engrossing every energy of the Dominion,
and rendering London financially impotent to him. For sheer tenacity,
for courage which attacked the most formidable obstacles without a
quail; for capacity to bring things to pass, I think Canada has not yet
begotten his equal. The marvel is, not that he and Sir Donald Mann
could not finish all that they had begun; but that they carried it so
nearly to the triumph, hope of which had been like a pillar of cloud to
them in the days whereon the multitude applauded, and a pillar of fire
in the night of difficulty such as they had endured when the non-
Canadian was preferred before them, and when the panic of the fall of
1907 smote North America.
Beginning as an unknown venturer into Lombard street, Sir William
Mackenzie had brought to Canada over three hundred million dollars
for Canadian Northern Railways, which had made possible an amount
of development of all kinds, the subtraction of which from Canada’s
economic content to-day would leave the nation poor indeed. But,
while this was happening, the star of Canada had been in the
ascendant, and it seemed that British money had at last developed an
unchangeable westward impetus.
There seem to be investment flows and ebbs in the affairs of men.
They are without the regularity in time, but they have the variability in
volume of the Bay of Fundy tides. One recalls periods wherein there
was either so little opportunity or inclination to proceed with the
development of the earth’s natural resources that, as an old London
friend said, a man with a hundred thousand pounds to lend could take
it down to the City, and not earn enough with it to buy his lunch.
There is, no doubt, a psychological explanation of the accession and
diminution of fiscal confidence in times of peaceful commerce
undisturbed by the threat of war. There is also a partial accountability
for the turning of capital into this or that channel of increase. It is the
tendency of investment to overplay its hand when the habit has grown
of putting faith and cash into a particular species of enterprise.
During the first period of Canadian railway expansion following the
Crimean war wheat in Ontario went up to two dollars a bushel. Real
estate in towns like Whitby and Ingersoll rose to the fabulous price of
$300 per foot frontage—the selling value of land on Jasper Avenue,
Edmonton’s greatest thoroughfare, when the Canadian Northern
approached from the East, and the capital of the infant Alberta had
been set up there. Van Horne’s faith in the empty West was based on
the fertility of its soil and the certainty that the United States would
soon fill sufficiently to create a demand for more northern lands. But
that expectation would be fulfilled—or its fulfilment accelerated—when
shrewd men would induce capital to flow into the virgin terrain. The
C.P.R. had the tremendous task of pioneering with steel across the
Canadian plains. The northern areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and
Alberta awaited an equal, indeed, a more daring enterprise. Mackenzie
and Mann were the all-Canadian instrumentalities for the adventure.
They must obtain capital through London.
Representation there was a vital concern, seeing that it was not
proposed to hand control of the great enterprise to directors who
knew no more of Canada than was known by the English
administration of the Grand Trunk. Absent treatment was no part of
the creed of the two boldest Canadians of their time. The financial
representative was found in a man of extraordinary mentality and
financial genius, Mr. R. M. Horne-Payne. His services to Canada are
really registered in the creation of vast agricultural regions out of
solitude, and in the firm establishing of communities, from quiet
hamlets to rushing cities, where the highest amenities of civilization
have succeeded the wandering buffalo, and have substituted the
sawmill for the towering pine.
The final reliance for Canadian railway expansion was of course, the
comparatively small British investor. But, with so many opportunities to
place money all over the world, this multitudinous host could not be
depended on to produce, at a day or two’s notice all the money that
was required to build a thousand miles of track from Pembroke to Port
Arthur. Rushes to gold and silver camps have no counterpart in railway
building spread over many years. To windward of the small investor,
there must, therefore, be anchorages in the deeps of underwriting.
The railway requires, say, fifteen million dollars for a certain range
of construction. Experience has shown that the wide advertising of an
issue in the British money market usually brings at once subscriptions
of from thirty to forty per cent. of the money required. Great financial
houses must be found to guarantee purchase of the whole issue; they,
in turn, retailing the securities as the demand for them continues. The
retired colonel, who takes five hundred pounds’ worth of Government-
guaranteed debenture stock on to-day’s advertising, will be ready for
more at midsummer, when he gets what he wants from his broker—
and that is how issues are absorbed, when they are not all snapped
up as soon as they are offered.
A. J. MITCHELL (P. 170)
“Vice-president in charge of finance ...

retired with the president”
R. M. HORNE-PAYNE (P. 243)
“A man of extraordinary mentality and

financial genius”
The financial representative of the swiftly-growing Canadian

Northern required, then, three outstanding qualifications—first, great
and sincere faith in Canada’s immediate future; secondly, capacity to
impart his confidence to important underwriters; and thirdly, a sound
judgment of the temper and capabilities of the investing class whose
response is the primary justification of the underwriters’ confidence.
Mr. Horne-Payne, in a degree that can only be appreciated by those
who have worked with him, has these qualifications—the proof of
which was the British investment of over three hundred million dollars
in the Canadian Northern, during his representation of it.
One illustration only of his faculty can be given. A friend saw him at
his house in Brentwood, Essex, early one autumn. “I have just come in
after motoring from Buxton, where I have had a short holiday,” said
Horne-Payne. “We passed through Leamington. I think I can get about
three hundred and fifty thousand pounds out of the town next winter.”
The records show how accurate his forecast was.
The war changed all that. With London closed to him, the
indomitable Sir William, who never parted with his nerve, found in
New York a combination which was willing to consider seeing the
Canadian Northern through, by taking care of the millions of dormant
securities that must become active, by paying off the short-term
notes; and by furnishing the funds necessary to raise the system to a
standard worthy of its Dominion-wide theatre of operation.
While we hung on to the job of making the best of a heart-breaking,
never-ending crisis, which even the delusive gains of the war could not
mitigate, the New York syndicate invited Mr. E. E. Loomis, now
President of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and Mr. J. W. Platten, President
of the United States Mortgage and Trust Company, of New York, to
report on the value of the property. These gentlemen, in turn,
appointed Messrs. Coverdale and Colpitts, two Canadians of high
standing in the engineering profession in the United States, who had
been conspicuously engaged in railway and industrial valuations, to
examine thoroughly the physical features and contributories of nearly
ten thousand miles of Canadian Northern railway.
A year was spent on this investigation. But, while it was going on,
the Dominion Government, in view of the perilous condition of the old
Grand Trunk, as menaced by its offspring, the G.T.P., and of the utterly
hopeless position of the National Transcontinental, which the Grand
Trunk had refused to take over, appointed a Royal Commission,
consisting of Sir Henry Drayton, chairman of the Dominion Board of
Railway Commissioners, President Smith of the New York Central lines,
and Mr. William Acworth, an eminent British railway economist, to
report on the whole railway situation of Canada. No criticism is due
the Government for this action, in view of its commitments to both
junior transcontinentals.
Early in 1917 the Coverdale-Colpitts report was printed. It absolutely
justified the broad policy on which the Canadian Northern had been
built; and there was good reason to expect that the New York
syndicate would participate in Canadian Northern responsibilities. But
on its heels came the Drayton-Acworth report, recommending
nationalization, and the Smith minority report, demurring. No
syndicate in the world would have committed itself to heavy financing
of a great railway system, under such conditions. The New York
people held off. We held on, but with only the scantest chance of
coming through the war corporately alive.
In the end the Government assumed control of the Canadian
Northern congeries of railways. The alternative was a receivership and
reorganization, in which the guaranteed securities would have to be
honoured by the Governments concerned; and the unsecured
investors would have to take their meagre chance of full salvation. On
the whole, perhaps, the best interests of the greatest number were
best served by what was done. But if Mackenzie and Mann had been
merely bent on self-service they might have come more profitably out
of a formal Canadian Northern bankruptcy.
They held almost all the capital stock. Their position would have had
what Grand Trunk junior shareholders have since called the nuisance
value of a certain ability to hamper any attempt to make a settlement
without their concurrence. But the British investors were held to have
the dominant claim. The arbitrators’ award of ten million eight
hundred thousand dollars to the capital stockholders, limited
beforehand by agreement with the Government to a round ten
millions, meant no such gain to them. They had pledged their interest,
and the money had gone into construction. Certainly they had stood to
gain by the success of the great venture. They also stood to lose.
They lost, and raised no voice in lamentation.
In no sense do these discussions profess to be a history of the
Canadian Northern, or of the two remarkable men whose partnership
made the railway. Perhaps I was daily too deeply immersed in meeting
the responsibilities which grew out of the superintendency between
Gladstone and Dauphin, to be qualified to present the story in its
historical perspective. But that immersion at least gave me, in many
respects, a unique all-around intimacy with the enterprise itself, and
its bearing upon the expanding life of Canada during a most fateful
quarter of a century.
Sir William Mackenzie spent much of his time on trans-Atlantic
missions. He was also interested in many other undertakings which
absorbed their due proportion of his time. Sir Donald Mann, whose
capacities are in keeping with the solidity of his physical frame, did a
great deal of planning ahead. The problem of access to the Pacific was
very much in his mind for twenty years, though he said little about it.
The railway policy on which the British Columbia Government
appealed to the country in December, 1909, was worked out during Sir
Donald’s visit to Victoria in the preceding winter. Negotiations for
charters were almost entirely in his hands.
It was not a sinecure to keep pace with the multitudinous demands
for equipment in men, material and methods which arose out of the
addition of an average of nine furlongs of railway per day to the
system, for the first eighteen years; and of a total of 1,958 miles in
1915. Between six and seven hundred towns and shipping points are
on the map as the direct result of that record, with every phase of
which I was closely associated. We had good fortune in assembling an
able, loyal and economical staff. Errors were made, of course—who
makes no mistakes never makes anything. But if the story of the rise
and fall of the Canadian Northern is ever written by some man who
can by no possibility be called an interested partisan, his finding, on
the unquestionable facts, can only be that the creators of the
enterprise deserved more of their country than it is now possible for
both of them to receive.
C H A P T E R X V.
Speaking some truth about the difficulty of operating a railway for
the nation.
O
n this continent there surely never was such a weird
phantasmagoria of railroad changes as occurred during and
immediately following the war.
Canada led the Western Hemisphere into the fight that was to save
freedom, and was to magnify Canning’s saying about the New World
redressing the balance of the Old. The cost of the war in economic
disturbance, during its progress, and since the delusive peace, was as
little foreseen as its immediate cost in blood and treasure. What
Armageddon did to North American railways is not yet appreciated by
the millions who use them.
As the war worsened, the Canadian railway situation worsened with
it. The penalties of overbuilding were felt on every side. There was
extraordinary development of war industries; but the cessation of
immigration, the attendant drag upon agriculture and commerce; and
the curtailment of ordinary measures of maintenance and betterment
made it inevitable that very heavy expenditures must be faced as soon
as peace returned.
The war brought a grievous end to the Canadian Northern as a
Mackenzie and Mann enterprise. It also demonstrated beyond a
peradventure the hopelessness, from the beginning, of the Grand
Trunk’s fathering of the Grand Trunk Pacific, by throwing that western
system into the hands of the Government, under a receivership.
Then, as if these difficulties were not aggravating enough, the entry
of the United States into the war, at a time when wages across the line
had soared almost beyond trade unionist dreams of avarice, threw the
railways into a Government pool, with a confounding result on
Canadian railway administration. The McAdoo wages award on the
railways which came under control of the Secretary of the Treasury
raised expenses on all Canadian railways to a point which, though they
compelled rate increases, still could not adequately be met by any
charges which the Railway Board deemed fair to the public interest.
The policeman’s lot in the Pirates of Penzance was indeed a happy one
compared with the Canadian railway executives’ job towards the end
of the war, and during the period of re-construction immediately
following the armistice.
In such circumstances it was fated that we should carry through one
of the strangest phases of the history of transportation—to change
two great systems of privately projected and privately controlled
railways, into public ownership properties, to join them with a network
of Government railways already in existence; and to prepare the way
for the speedy incorporation with these three main ingredients, of the
senior system of Canadian railways—the Grand Trunk.
One had travelled a long way from the tiny line between Gladstone
and Dauphin, although it was less than twenty-two years from the day
I left the old Manitoba North Western to the period during which the
new directors of the publicly-owned Canadian Northern Railway took
over the Intercolonial and the National Transcontinental, and
“Canadian National Railways” was first used as a name that was to
represent the legal unity of the largest system in the world.
Perhaps, if we were hunting for records here, something unique
might be discovered in one’s service. A little pioneer railway came into
existence; grew to a system of nearly ten thousand miles, passed from
private ownership to a national enterprise; carried on for four years
under its former statutory identity, during which period there were
associated with it, first all the Government railways whose building
was fundamental to Confederation; and, secondly, the Grand Trunk
Pacific, launched as a semi-public enterprise with the intention of
dwarfing its existence. Only one general officer was concerned with
every phase of that kaleidoscopic story.
His experience involved a multiplicity of responsibilities which,
viewed from a comparatively restful contact with less exacting
business, seem now to be chiefly remarkable for the fact that they did
not entirely swamp his sense of personal identity. An advantage of
being away from it all is that one may obtain a clearer perspective of
what happened, and of the trend of its public importances, than was
possible when one was encompassed by administrative labour.
There were eight years between the outbreak of war and the
departure of my colleagues and myself from the Canadian National
Railways. That fateful period seems naturally to divide itself into three
distinct phases: the labour immediately attributable to the war; the
measures required to make the best of the general situation left by
the war, and the methods by which it was endeavoured to reconcile
the efficiency of private management with the essentials of
responsibility to Parliament. The last first.
As far as public policy was concerned, the situation into which a
Board of Directors, newly appointed by the Government, entered was
made for them by events which happily, perhaps, for them, were part
of the war, as well as part of a railway problem of the first financial
and administrative magnitude. We came into office when members of
Parliament had something to think about besides jobs.
Even if the word “politics” were not used here, readers would use it;
for, after all, you cannot have a revolution in a nation’s railway affairs
which depends on Parliamentary action, without political
considerations entering into it. Besides the great interest of the whole
body politic, which is statesmanship, the pull of the hungry partisan is
sure to be felt, sooner or later.
Except for the infinitesimal proportion of men to whom nothing in
public service is so important as the chance to get their hands on
some public post or property, I think the public sentiment west of
Montreal was, and is, all for keeping politics out of all the railway
administration for which Parliament became responsible by the taking
over of the Canadian Northern, and the receivership of the Grand
Trunk Pacific.
During private ownership, the few attempts which were made to
influence appointments by friends of Governments which had given
guarantees had failed ignominiously. When the Canadian Northern
became a National liability altogether, the war was almost at its worst.
The acquisition of the system meant so much obligation that few
supporters of the Government felt like making a party holiday out of
the transaction. The war had for three years been the universal
preoccupation, when, in 1917, party considerations were subordinated
to the formation of a Union Government. From the point of view of
starting with a clean slate, as far as the attentions of old-fashioned
machine politicians were to be apprehended, conditions could not be
more favourable for nationalizing thousands of miles of railway,
hitherto privately directed. Indeed, the Government exercised its
authority over the Canadian Northern, before the Union Government
arrived, by appointing as directors: Mr. W. K. George of Toronto, Mr.
William Christie of Winnipeg, and Mr. Harry Richardson of Kingston.
This happened almost without Parliamentarians or the public waking
up to its significance.
Mr. Richardson was appointed to the Senate. Senator Nicholls of
Toronto had been a director of the Canadian Northern from the
beginning. While the final transfer to the Government was still in the
future, certain legislation was pending affecting the railway, and these
two senators resigned their directorships so as to avoid every
appearance of political advantage being associated with the railway.
It was in the spring of 1918 when the complete surrender of the
Canadian Northern to the Government was announced. On May 15th
Sir Robert Borden described to the House of Commons the
administrative policy of the Government:
“As to the immediate future, I have already said that we do not
intend to operate the Canadian Northern system directly under a
department of the Government. It is our intention to operate it at
present through the corporate machinery by which it has been
operated in the past. There will be a reconstituted Board of Directors.
We shall endeavour to get the best men we can; and we shall not
interfere with them. We shall leave the administration and operation of
the road to be carried on absolutely under that Board of Directors, and
we shall use every means available to the Government (and, if
necessary, we shall come to Parliament for that purpose) in order that
anything like political influence, political patronage or political
interference—I am using the word ‘political’ in its narrowest sense—
shall be absolutely eliminated from the administration of that road.”
This was the only policy which could be laid down with adequate
appreciation of the magnitude of our task. It would be less than
justice to Sir Robert Borden to refrain from saying that he and his
Government lived up to that declaration. The same is true of his
successor, Mr. Meighen. Neither directly nor indirectly did either of
these Prime Ministers make a single communication to me, or intended
to reach me, as far as I have the slightest inkling, with a view to
influencing any decision likely to affect any man’s good will towards
the Government.
Up to that time Government railways to the north of the St.
Lawrence, had not been operated on the basis of political advantage
which had affected the Intercolonial management from the beginning.
The National Transcontinental, between Quebec and Winnipeg, except
for the grain traffic to Fort William, was a sort of waif, with so scanty a
revenue that, with the war occupying everybody’s mind, nobody
interested in votes seemed to pay it any attention. It found practically
nothing for idle political hands to do. Satan was busy elsewhere.
Between the Ottawa and the Pacific, members of Parliament had not
all their lives seen the section men of the only railway in their region
changed with every change of Government, because they were friends
of the departing Administration, and friends of the incoming
Government had been promised their jobs.
The election of December, 1917, was followed by limitations of
patronage which the old-style politicians did not like; but which they
knew it was futile then to attempt to revoke. Sir Robert Borden’s
declaration was received without vociferous enthusiasm and without
audible complaint from his supporters.
Parliament prorogued eight days after the Premier notified the
politicians to keep off the track. In September the complete new Board
of Directors of the Canadian Northern was appointed. Not one of them
knew anything of his contemplated appointment until he received the
direct offer of a place. Not one of them was considered because he
had any political influence. Every one of them was chosen for his
potential value to the board as a man of wide experience in business,
in most cases as a large shipper of freight; and in one case because
he was of the foremost financiers in the Dominion. Every man hated
the idea of political influence being injected into the railway business.
If it be of interest to such as love to look minutely into such matters, it
was found later that a majority of the Board were old-time Liberals.
We were a real Board of Directors, and I think no more harmonious
body of business men ever worked together—I don’t mean in the
sense that there were no differences of opinion; but in the sense that
there was unity of aim, and a single-minded desire to do the best that
was in us for vast properties, in the success of which the national
prosperity was very heavily at stake.
The Board had not been at work very long before it discovered that
it had been given the task of fusing ancient and modern, and that one
of the elements in the projected fusion was not in love with the
operation. There was, indeed, some temptation to feel that the
situation was expressed by:—
For East is East and West is West

And never the twain shall meet.
Our appointment as the Board of Directors of the Canadian Northern

system was followed by an order-in-council appointing us to
administer all the Canadian Government Railways, and to that extent
removing them from the immediate oversight of the Minister of
Railways and Canals, who was liable to be changed as some section
men were.
It is as well to copy here the letter which Dr. Reid, the Minister of
Railways, wrote to me when he had parted with the direct
responsibility for administering the Government lines:
“Now that the Board of Directors has been appointed for the
Canadian Northern Railway and that the Transcontinental Railway and
the Intercolonial Railway and all other branch lines of railway owned
by the Dominion Government are being placed under your Board for
the management and operation, I wish to impress on you the
understanding that I had with you here last week, namely: The Board
must operate the railways without any interference or influence from
anyone connected with this Department or any influence outside of it.
“The future of the Government ownership of railways in my opinion,
depends entirely on their operation being carried on free from any
political or other influence. The operation should be carried on the
same as a private corporation, keeping in view at all times economy
and the interests of the shareholders who of course, are the people of
Canada.
“If you desire any information from the Government or
consideration of any matters in connection with the Government
Railways, then I ask that you submit it in writing, so that I can lay all
matters before the Governor-in-Council in the proper way. I shall then
forward you the reply officially. In this way a proper record will be on
file.
“This in my opinion, is the way to carry out the operation of the
road, and if you agree with me, I hope you will see that this is done.”
The name Canadian National was used, as already said, for general
convenience, but legal identities were then in no way affected. The
Board’s first duty was to see the property it was to manage. There was
a trip to the Pacific coast and then one to the Atlantic seaboard.
Since before the war the West had known the disadvantages of
hampered operation and delayed completion of branches that were
urgently required. It wanted service; and it had no hoary traditions,
practices, or hopes to recover or maintain. No old war horses had
been running loose for ten years expecting that when next the fortune
of political battle turned out a Minister of Railways they would be
turned into the paddock.
The East was as different from the West as chalk is from cheese—it
could not be otherwise. For nearly fifty years the Government railway
had been an unquestioned engine of political patronage. The oldest
inhabitants when they gazed at a time-table saw in it the covenants of
Confederation. The attitude of many men who are not so grey was
and is: (1) That the Intercolonial being named in the British North
America Act, and projected and promised as a political link between
eastern and central Canada, must so remain; (2) That, taking not the
most direct route from Montreal to Halifax, and therefore giving rates
to shippers based sometimes less on mileage haul than on the
shippers’ desire, the Intercolonial must not be treated as a commercial
railway; but as a sort of douceur to induce the maritime provinces to
remain confederated with the Canadas.
This view has been advocated with great fervour by deputations
that have come to protest against the ruthless administration that had
its head and offending in Toronto. It is not unanimously held, down
east. Even some politicians have said openly to their friends that there
is nothing worth fighting about in the views of the departed fathers of
Confederation, and that the East must look for business connections
with the West only on businesslike bases.
A few days after the armistice the Board reached Moncton for a
Saturday afternoon and Sunday acquaintance with the Intercolonial
headquarters. It found the atmosphere as chilly indoors as out, after
the President had given to a representative meeting the Board’s
assurance of goodwill, and appreciation of the need for the local
officers to have large jurisdiction; and had sketched the possibilities of
interchange between Eastern and Western officers with a view to
broadening the experience of the whole staff.
A gentleman of much ability and intense local patriotism presented
us with a picture of an Ontario we had never seen before; and
generally left the impression that something like a Western pirate was
determined to prey on an Eastern victim.
Plainly, we were not as welcome as the flowers in May. The
archangel Gabriel could not have become popular down by the sea if
he had undertaken the job of co-ordinating the services of the railways
which the Dominion of Canada now possessed. With all the good will
in the world, it can be said that it was too much to expect that
excellent men, habituated to party control of a railway, would discern
the least beneficence in the revolution which had come upon the
ancient institution.
There never was anything substantial in the objections to control
from Toronto, as compared with the former conditions. Actual conduct
of the Intercolonial centred in Moncton, as much as it always did.
What really happened was that Toronto was substituted for Ottawa;
and a President and Board of Directors succeeded a Minister. The local
superintendents’ proposals for the year’s betterments, as passed upon
by the general manager, formerly reached Ottawa, and were there
approved by the Minister or rejected, in readiness for the estimates to
come before Parliament. Now, by the like process, proposals reached
Toronto, before being incorporated in Parliamentary estimates.
Fundamentally, that was the change. But, there was the difference
that existed between the President and the Minister—as to coming
into office and going out, they weren’t both subject to the same
powers as determined the choice of the section men.
It would have been vain to look for the instantaneous disappearance
of a temper which, during two generations, had been deeply
embedded in the political consciousness of three provinces and of half
of a fourth. Sir Robert Morier, who was regarded as the ablest British
ambassador of the later Victorian era, used to say it was the business
of the statesman to be five per cent. ahead of public opinion. How far
Sir Robert Borden’s policy was ahead of public opinion in the
maritimes—or rather the opinion of the party stalwarts—one cannot
say. But as session succeeded session it became clearer and clearer
that, in the East, the administration of the National Railways would be
regarded from a very different point of view from that which actuated
the West.
In the House of Commons there were criticisms of my former
relation to the Canadian Northern, and demands for more plentiful
financial details of our work. Nothing was ever alleged, or could be
alleged, on the first count, of which dignified notice could be taken.
The second criticism did raise a question of public policy; and it is as
well to say one or two things about it.
Against Parliament’s right to control the expenditures of
Parliamentary money no word can be said. But there are limitations,
for instance, when competitive contracts and commercial services are
concerned. There is, indeed, a question of the use of ordinary
common sense, which must not be jettisoned by a railway president,
and ought not to be abandoned by a politician.
Look at imperial naval defence for a minute. The House of
Commons is asked to vote say two million pounds for a battleship to
be built by Vickers-Maxim. Every member of the House, therefore, has
the right to inquire into everything relating to the contract. But
honourable, experienced, trusted servants of the Crown have been
employed to formulate a proposal on which their character, skill and
experience are staked. Suppose one member, not to say twenty, began
to inquire meticulously into the prices for all sorts of materials—the
House would become tired of and then furious with him, and he would
be suppressed as a nuisance.
Parliament’s attitude to a national railway must be based on one of
two assumptions—that the management is worthy or is unworthy of
confidence. The efficiency of its management, like that of any other
public management, is to be judged from the methods employed to
carry on its business. The first test of these methods belongs to the
known character of the administrative chiefs of the railway. On this
point I have nothing further to say. The second is in the processes by
which financial demands reach Parliament. What were these
processes?
In the old days, I believe, the estimates for the Intercolonial were
well sifted, first through district officers, and finally by the Minister
with whom a committee of the Cabinet was associated. But, based on
too abundant experience, there was always the fear, in the railway
officials, of political interference from the constituencies; and always
the possibility that somebody with a real or fancied grievance would
get access to the Minister.
The Board’s method was for the local superintendents’ suggested
appropriations to be refined by the officers above them, passed on by
the President, submitted by him to the directors; revised by them, and
then by the President carried to the Minister and a strong and, as I
can testify, a vigilant committee of the Cabinet. Finally they were
brought to the House by the Minister, with whom sat his deputy, who
was also a director of the railways. Then they were open to the
criticism of two hundred and thirty-five members, and were entirely
subject to the approval of the House of Commons, which could
demand all our reports.
Now let us take a concrete case, not of permanent betterment, but
of contracts for one of the most important operating supplies. In 1922
we were summoned before the Public Accounts Committee. What took
place is on the record. Inquiry was made by a member for the current
cost of a commodity for the supply of which known friends of his were
also in the field. I took the position that it would be against the
national interest to disclose prices, which, I knew from experience,
were apt to be taken by certain firms desiring to get the business, the
duty and freight added, and a tender put in for a few cents per ton
below the price obtained by absolutely strict competition. I instructed
my subordinate not to bring the information demanded.
The member demanding the information is one of the most expert
in all the forms of the House. When we pointed out that the subject of
his demand had to do with the current year’s expenses, with which
Parliament was concerned only as estimates; and did not touch the
year’s business then before the Public Accounts Committee, no further
effort was made to get the information. It would be inaccurate to say
no further effort was made to get me. The episode was typical of
many things, as to which men of affairs will need no further
elucidations.
Heaven preserve me from expressing political opinions; but there is
a temptation to say that the Conservative party may regard itself as
fortunate in the Borden Government’s double experience of war and
railway administration. From the point of view of observing the
conditions which Sir Robert laid down in May, 1918, the war stress,

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Time to Talk Implementing outstanding

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Child Language Development Learning to Talk 2nd Edition

Online Communication in Language Learning and Teaching

Time and Trace Multidisciplinary Investigations of

The Integration of Phonetic Knowledge in Speech Technology

Psychology for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals

Language Gender and Parenthood Online Negotiating

Parent Talk The Art of Effective Communication With the

Speech Enhancement Theory and Practice 2nd Edition Loizou

Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Inclusive Classroom

Assessing Children with Specific Learning Difficulties: A Teacher’s Practical Guide

Provision Mapping: Improving outcomes in primary schools

Time to Talk: Implementing outstanding practice in speech, language and communication

Implementing outstanding practice in speech,

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© 2013 Jean Gross

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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ISBN: 978-0-415-63333-8 (hbk)

1 Speech, language and communication – a growing issue 1

2 What do we know about how to support language development? 14

3 Stories from schools 25

7 Support for talk 94

9 Supporting children with more severe needs 146

Jean Gross CBE

Talk in the classroom

Extracts from national Ofsted reports

Table 1.1 Learned, used, taught

Listening Speaking Reading Writing

Learned first second third third

Used most next to most next to least least

Taught least next to least next to most most

Turning the dial

Narrowing the gap

Behaviour and wellbeing

● Two-thirds of 7- to 14-year-olds with serious behaviour problems have language impair-

The scale of the problem

Children learning English as an additional language

Figure 1.1 Context-embedded and context-reduced tasks

Can we make a difference?

The impact of national initiatives

The impact of local strategic action

● every child is listened to and is able to express themselves confidently;

ESCAL uses the ‘three-Wave’ model:

● Wave 1 (Universal): Leadership development, universal multi-agency training for all

Local community strategies

The language development pyramid

Play and interaction

Attention and listening

Figure 2.1 The language development pyramid

really interest them, so as to encourage them to focus. In a primary or secondary classroom,

Three elements of language

● Receptive language: what we understand from the language of others.

What really matters in early language development

● the amount of language spoken to a child;

Let us look at each of these in turn.