Background and Aim: Discourse-based interventions were studied less in speech therapy. This study aimed to investigate the effects of discourse-based intervention on language disabilities in school-aged children with borderline intelligence quotient (IQ).

Methods: In an experimental study, 33 students at the age of 6-13 years with borderline intelligence quotient (17 students for intervention and 16 students for control group) were selected with available sampling. The intervention lasted 14 sessions (every session: 45 minutes) that focused on the structure and content of discourse. Personal narrative was elicited with explanation of the same topic (go to a trip) for pre- and post-test.

Results: Mean scores of intelligence quotient, age and education had no difference between the two groups. The intervention caused the increase of compound sentences (p=0.038), types of cohesive conjunctions (p=0.003), and related information (p=0.008) and decrease of ungrammatical sentences (p=0.031).

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that participation in the intervention program has a clinically significant effect on the participants' abilities to produce personal narrative.

Background and Aim: Students with borderline intelligence quotient experience types of language disorders that are seen in their narratives, too. This research aimed to investigate the linguistic characteristics of picture-elicited narratives in school-aged children with borderline intelligence quotient.

Methods: In a cross-sectional study, 30 students with borderline intelligence quotient and 25 typically developing children at the age of 6-13 years were randomly selected from a population of four schools. Narrative discourse was elicited with description of pictures of one storybook.

Results: Students with borderline IQ were weaker than typically developing children in complex (p<0.001), compound sentences (p<0.001) and produced more ungrammatical sentences (p=0.007). Students with borderline intelligence quotient produced fewer related (p<0.001) but more unrelated information (p=0.033) and types of cohesive (p=0.010) and "HAM" conjunction (p=0.022) was fewer in them.

Conclusion: Students with borderline intelligence quotient showed more linguistic impairment in description of story.