Let’s use a simple example to demonstrate its use

Shape Coding by Susan Ebbels® is the most effective clinical tool that I have ever used to teach children the rules of English grammar and so much more too.

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Let’s take an example: A child omits the auxiliary verbs from his sentences e.g. “Dog sleeping”.

We may repeat what the child said, including the word that he omitted, e.g. “The dog is sleeping”. By doing so, we’ve actually added 2 words; not one! Despite our best efforts, the child may fail to notice the difference between what he said and what we’ve just produced.

We may try to explain by saying to the child: “You said: ‘Dog sleeping’. You need to say: ‘The dog is sleeping'”. This additional information actually makes it more difficult for the child to work out what he needs to change.

We sometimes try to explain the grammatical error by saying: “You forgot the little word in the sentence” or “You left a word out”. This is very tricky for a child as English sentences contain a number of little words e.g. “is”; “am”: “are”; “a”; “the” etc. How can he work out which one he needs to add?

With shapes, we merely point to them while we produce the sentence. “the dog” belongs in an oval; “is” belongs in a diamond; and “sleeping” belongs in a hexagon. When we later point to the diamond, the child knows exactly which word he needs to include.

This system works equally well for teaching children to comprehend and produce grammatical word-endings, vocabulary and stories too. Once they are able to understand and use the rules correctly within their spoken language, with a few, simple prompts, they are able to transfer these skills to their written work too.