The present article reports results of a real-world effectiveness trial conducted in Denmark with six thousand four hundred eighty-three 3- to 6-year-olds designed to improve children's language and preliteracy skills. Children in 144 child cares were assigned to a control condition or one of three planned variations of a 20-week storybook-based intervention: a base intervention and two enhanced versions featuring extended professional development for educators or a home-based program for parents. Pre- to posttest comparisons revealed a significant impact of all three interventions for preliteracy skills (= .21-.27) but not language skills (d = .04-.16), with little differentiation among the three variations. Fidelity, indexed by number of lessons delivered, was a significant predictor of most outcomes. Implications for real-world research and practice are considered.

Detailed knowledge about speech development in children acquiring different languages provides important information from a clinical and a theoretical perspective: First, it provides a baseline for the evaluation of whether a child shows typical, delayed or deviant speech development. Further, differences in speech development across languages can help to understand how the phonological systems of ambient languages affects children's speech acquisition. To date, little is known about Danish. It was suggested, however, that the acquisition process might be slower for Danish-speaking children due to the "blurry" sound structure of Danish. The aim of the current study was, therefore, to investigate typical speech development in 443 Danish-speaking children, i.e. types and age of occurrence of children's phonological processes as well as on the acquisition of phones and clusters. The results showed that Danish-speaking children, in contrast to the expectations, were not delayed but advanced compared to children acquiring other languages.

Zusammenfassung Kinder mit Aussprachest?rungen unklarer Genese machen den Gro?teil der kindlichen Patienten in logop?dischen Praxen aus. Sprachtherapeuten steht heute auch im deutschsprachigen Raum eine Vielzahl an Materialien/Vorgehensweisen f?r ihre diagnostischen Schritte zur Verf?gung. Der vorliegende Artikel soll diese Schritte bei Aussprachest?rungen darstellen und existierende Materialien auf ihre Ziele und Aktualit?t vorstellen. Des Weiteren wird die besondere Situation mehrsprachiger Kinder im Hinblick auf den phonologischen Erwerb und die Diagnostik von Aussprachest?rungen diskutiert.

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