IDV uses colour-coded
symbols in four levels. The sets increase in complexity through the addition of
more symbols per page, an increase in the range of topics, and the
sophistication of the language available.
Each set is arranged in commonly needed topics and each topic is
supported by its own worksheets.
The top page displays all the topics and selection of a topic
takes the user to one or more pages of vocabulary relevant to that topic.
Vocabulary in the earlier sets is retained and built upon at
higher levels.
At all levels "sentence starters" are available- i.e. whole
phrases represented by one symbol (e.g. I would like, I’m going to etc.) to
reduce the number of selections needed for sentence building.
Each level also has an "About me" page and a "Quicktalk" page,
designed to offer useful complete sentences (common requests, social
conversation etc.) under one symbol.
Background colours for the symbols have been used to help to
develop a sense of language structure (e.g. adjectives are blue, verbs are
green) and to aid the process of symbol selection.
On the pages, words are arranged in colour coded blocks, and as
far as possible, in a left to right sequence.
It provides real face to face spoken language rather than
written language eg. "I’ve got" rather than "I have got"; "you’re or we’ve"
rather than "you are or we have".
