MY Early Language Processing Intervention (ELPI)

An Early Language Processing Intervention (ELPI) must be schema driven. That is why the 10-day Speech Sound Play plan is the ideal starting point for children who have already started school. For babies and toddlers, we can begin even earlier and take a slightly different approach.
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Speech Sound Play before Speech Sound Pics (letters/ graphemes)

Early language processing refers to how young children take in, organise, and make sense of spoken language. This includes:

Noticing and attending to speech sounds (phonological awareness)
Forming sound–meaning links (vocabulary development)
Recognising patterns and structures in language (grammar and syntax)
Building mental frameworks (schemas) to categorise and store language efficiently

When we say 'schema driven', we are highlighting that children process language more effectively when it is linked to what they already know and understand, helping them predict, organise, and retain new information.

Early Language Processing matters because schema-driven processing makes learning faster, more meaningful, and more memorable. When children connect new language input to what they already know, they are:

More likely to understand and remember it because it fits into an existing mental framework.
Better able to predict what comes next, which supports fluent processing rather than slow, effortful decoding.
More engaged, because the language feels relevant and makes sense in context.

If early language learning is not schema driven, children may memorise disconnected facts or sounds without truly understanding them. This leads to surface-level learning that is harder to apply, especially when reading and spelling become more complex.

This is exactly why our Speech Sound Play plan matters. It gives children meaningful, structured experiences that build these mental frameworks before they face the rigid, one-size-fits-all structure of synthetic phonics programmes, which are designed for whole-class delivery and unable to support linguistic and neurodiversity.

Ask about MyELPI for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers! Play@MyWordz.com

Please support free dyslexia screening for the children who need it most - visit DyslexiaBaby.com

We need to identify the children who are at greater risk of struggling to learn to read and spell, and ensure they connect speech and symbols early. Without this early connection, they are more likely to become instructional casualties, particularly if they do not begin this process until school age and the instruction provided does not meet their needs (for example, a synthetic phonics programme). Help us find these children and prevent them from becoming instructional casualties. Once established, these challenges are far harder to overcome.