The Adapted DLS

Differences between the adapted version and the standard Derbyshire Language Scheme

For the LIVELY project, it was necessary to design a version of the Derbyshire Language Scheme (DLS) which could be delivered with high treatment fidelity and reliability and which ‘matched’ the Building Early Sentences Therapy (BEST) as closely as possible in terms of dosage and delivery, whilst retaining the key principles of DLS. To that end, the LIVELY team worked with Mark Masidlover who, together with Wendy Knowles devised the DLS, to develop a version which aligned with DLS principles but met the above criteria.

The following describes the differences between the adapted version and the standard DLS.

Standard version	Adapted Version
The introduction of activities is generally considerably slower than that used in the Adapted version. There is a highly structured step-by-step introduction to concepts, starting at single word level of comprehension. This means that the concept word is the only word the child needs to process.	Vocabulary: Some concepts like ‘big’ and ‘little’ and prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’ and ‘under’ are not introduced slowly but used immediately in sentences.
Activities are designed for a single level of ability with language at the level the child normally understands.	Use of mixed ability groups, where less able children hear language slightly above their comprehension level. This can create difficulties in comprehension, and cause a deterioration in their expression.
Limited range of sentences covered, starting with the easiest to teach, with new ones only introduced once the child is competent with those being taught.	The full range of sentences used in the Scheme were covered in a 8 week period.
Swift changes to the equipment are made, if these create difficulties in understanding the language used.	No changes possible in equipment during the project, further complicated by changes necessitated to restrict Covid spread.

Slow, step by step approach

The standard version of the Derbyshire Language Scheme introduces children to vocabulary and sentences being taught slowly in small steps.

Teaching of concepts

For instance to teach ‘big’ and ‘little’, the child would be shown a large item and a small item which only differed in size. The teacher might for instance, present a small and large blue plate and described them in very simple language. ‘This is a big plate and this is a little plate.’ Several different objects would be shown which also only differed in size. For each pair, the child would be asked to select the large or small item. Once the teacher felt the child seemed to understand ‘big’ and ‘little’ in this context, the request would be increased in difficulty. For instance the child could be presented with the small and large cup and plate, and then be asked to give the teacher the little plate from the group of four items.

The child now has to consider both the name of the object and it's size – a two word level comprehension task. The child would be given sufficient practice at two word level to become consistent before increasing the difficulty again.

A similar procedure is used when introducing other new vocabulary for instance, prepositions ‘in’ ‘on’ and ‘under’.

The essential features of the approach, introducing new vocabulary at a low comprehension level and testing the child understands it, is an essential component of the standard DLS approach.

These small steps were not used in the adapted version.

Range of sentences taught

In the standard version of the DLS the range of sentences taught are selected based on known levels of difficulty. The child would first be introduced to those considered easy to teach, they would not be introduced to harder sentences until they were using the early ones reasonably easily.

Both comprehension and expression are handled in this way. In the adapted version, the full range of sentences taught would covered in a 8 week period. These included those considered more difficult for a child to learn.

Mixed ability groups.

For children with low comprehension ability, the teachers language is kept very simple. This applies to explanations of the activity as well as the sentences being taught. The requests would be kept to the bare minimum of words necessary to teach it. E.g. 'put the mouse on the book'. Activities in the adapted DLS were designed to be used with children to levels of comprehension (i.e. One and two, two and three, or three and four word levels). Requests were constructed for the more able children. The less able children were unlikely to be able to process all the words in the sentence. For example the sentence ‘put the mouse on the big book’ was used with children unlikely to understand big. This can cause such children to have difficulties both in comprehension and expression.

In an attempt to avoid this, these children were provided with non-verbal cues to make comprehension easier or unnecessary. This was only partially successful and some children still had difficulties.

Changes in equipment

There is a heavy emphasis on the teacher being very sensitive to any non-language difficulties children may have with the equipment used. They are expected to eliminate such problems quickly. This was not feasible in the Adapted Version where consistency was essential across different groups and over the course of the project. The problem was added to by changes in equipment necessitated by the Covid outbreak.