Language intervention in the early years - comparing the effectiveness of language intervention approaches for pre-school children with language difficulties

Language Intervention in the Early Years: comparing the efficacy of Building Early Sentences Therapy and the Derbyshire Language Scheme in improving language and functional communication outcomes in pre-school children with language disorder

Status

Active, not recruiting

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Interventional

Source

ISRCTN

Registry ID

ISRCTN10974028

Enrollment

104

Registered

2020-01-08

Start date

2020-02-01

Completion date

Unknown

Last updated

2025-02-24

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Language disorder Mental and Behavioural Disorders Developmental disorder of speech and language, unspecified

Interventions

Current interventions as of 24/02/2021: The Heather van der Lely Foundation has granted funding to Newcastle and Manchester Universities to conduct a cluster randomised control trial across 24 schoo

(Building Early Sentences Therapy (BEST), Derbyshire Language Scheme (DLS) and Continued Classroom Support (CCS)). The randomization was undertaken by the minimization method, attempting to balance ac

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

All

Inclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria: 1. Aged 3.5 - 4.5 years 2. Monolingual speaker of English/English as main language 3. Scoring at or below the 16th centile on a standardised play-based language assessment 4. With the ability to participate in a small group learning context

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion criteria: 1. Sensorineural hearing impairment 2. Severe visual impairment 3. Diagnosed learning disability

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame
Current primary outcome measure as of 24/02/2021: The outcomes of interest are children’s oral language development and their communicative participation. Children are assessed on all outcome measures at three time-points: baseline, outcome and follow-up. Baseline testing will happen when children are identified at the start of each wave, Outcome testing within 4 weeks of end of intervention, and Follow up testing approximately 8-12 weeks after intervention. Intervention group comparisons will be made on measures at outcome and at follow-up. Intention to treat and per protocol analyses will be conducted on all outcome measures which vary in their hypothesised distance from the intervention taught material. 1. Near: targeted sentence structures assessed through experimenter designed BEST and DLS assessments including picture description eliciting targeted sentence structures and a ‘toy test’ to assess comprehension of these sentences. 2. Intermediate: New Reynell Developmental Language Scales. 3. Far: FOCUS (Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six); parent and teacher report measure of communicative participation. Use of near, intermediate and far outcomes allow exploration of differences between interventions with respect to the degree to which learning transfers to broader language skills and communicative participation. Hence we do not make a distinction between primary and secondary outcomes but rather explore the effects on all 3 outcomes. It is possible that different approaches may have differing effects for each outcome. For intention-to-treat analyses the average outcome score across the three treatment arms on the relevant outcome measure will be used for all missing data. Per-protocol analyses will be conducted on all children with complete outcome data. Qualitative data regarding barriers and enablers to intervention delivery (reflective field notes) will be triangulated with a comparison between intention-to-treat and per-protocol outc	—

Measure

Time frame

Current primary outcome measure as of 24/02/2021: The outcomes of interest are children’s oral language development and their communicative participation. Children are assessed on all outcome measures at three time-points: baseline, outcome and follow-up. Baseline testing will happen when children are identified at the start of each wave, Outcome testing within 4 weeks of end of intervention, and Follow up testing approximately 8-12 weeks after intervention. Intervention group comparisons will be made on measures at outcome and at follow-up. Intention to treat and per protocol analyses will be conducted on all outcome measures which vary in their hypothesised distance from the intervention taught material. 1. Near: targeted sentence structures assessed through experimenter designed BEST and DLS assessments including picture description eliciting targeted sentence structures and a ‘toy test’ to assess comprehension of these sentences. 2. Intermediate: New Reynell Developmental Language Scales. 3. Far: FOCUS (Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six); parent and teacher report measure of communicative participation. Use of near, intermediate and far outcomes allow exploration of differences between interventions with respect to the degree to which learning transfers to broader language skills and communicative participation. Hence we do not make a distinction between primary and secondary outcomes but rather explore the effects on all 3 outcomes. It is possible that different approaches may have differing effects for each outcome. For intention-to-treat analyses the average outcome score across the three treatment arms on the relevant outcome measure will be used for all missing data. Per-protocol analyses will be conducted on all children with complete outcome data. Qualitative data regarding barriers and enablers to intervention delivery (reflective field notes) will be triangulated with a comparison between intention-to-treat and per-protocol outc

—

Secondary

Measure	Time frame
There are no secondary outcome measures	—

Countries

United Kingdom

Contacts

Public ContactCristina McKean

cristina.mckean@education.ox.ac.uk+44 (0)191 208 6528

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ISRCTN (via WHO ICTRP) · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026