The research reported investigated the efficacy of intervention, developed by a speech-language therapist and implemented by a teacher, for the language and phonological awareness (PA) abilities of pre-school, socially disadvantaged children. One study established that children from low socio-economic (SES) backgrounds had poorer skills on both measures compared to children of average SES. Half of the low SES group received language and PA intervention programmes and their progress was compared to untreated SES matched controls. Both programmes were highly effective with post-intervention performance not only exceeding that of SES controls but also equalling the performance of controls of average SES. (Contains 4 tables and 3 figures.)