The SHELL Study – What’s it all about?

Welcome to the Speech, Hearing and Early Language Learning (SHELL) Study. We want to find out how hearing and listening varies in classrooms and how this relates to children’s language learning and reading. This is a large study that will involve hundreds of children from schools in Cambridgeshire and surrounding areas.

What are we trying to find out?

Understanding speech in a noisy classroom can be a challenge for many children for multiple reasons. This could be because of their language and listening skills or due to difficulty hearing the speech.  We want to know more about how hearing, language and listening skills develop and how they impact on progress at school. This project will help us understand why children learn at different rates and how best to help those who find speech difficult to understand. It has the potential to help schools to teach children more effectively and to shape government education policies.

What are we going to do?

From September 2026 we will be visiting Year 1 classes to run a whole day of science activities to teach children about the brain and the senses. During these visits we will ask children to complete a series of games that measure different listening and language skills. Each child will complete these games on an iPad while wearing headphones.  On another day, we will also complete some short assessments of language, reading and hearing with individual children. We will return to the school when the children are in Year 2 so we can measure how their skills have changed.