New Reynell Developmental Language Scales

The New Reynell Developmental Language Scales (NRDLS) is a new, fourth edition of a widely-used assessment for identifying speech and language delay and impairment in young children and is designed for administration by speech and language therapists. NRDLS provides an assessment of key features of language and has been revised, improved and newly standardised on more than 1,200 children aged 2 years to 7 years 5 months in the UK. The revisions to the new edition have been based on recent research on child language acquisition and indicators of language impairment, together with user feedback. There are two scales in the NRDLS: one explores aspects of a child’s understanding of selected vocabulary items and grammatical features (the Comprehension Scale); and the other examines the child’s production of the same features of language (the Production Scale). Parallel sections within the scales aid comparison of a child’s comprehension and production skills. A highlight of the new edition is The Multilingual Toolkit. The Multilingual Toolkit has been produced to help adapt the concepts and materials of NRDLS to situations where there is linguistic diversity and to give guidance on how to adapt and use NRDLS with children for whom English is an additional language (EAL). It illustrates the sorts of adaptations that could be made, uses examples to indicate what an individual child’s performance might mean for assessment and also offers advice on adapting instructions, taking account of cultural differences and taking account of differences in experience and language input across cultures and linguistic groups.