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Despite the increasing amount of bi- and multilingual clients in the caseloads of speech and language therapists, there is a limited number of instruments that clinicians can use to distinguish transient language difference, due to a bilingual environment, from language disorder. In the current study, the Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers’ Proficiency in Learning English (DAPPLE, Hasson et al., 2013) was therefore adapted to Italian and administered to 18 bilingual children who had been referred to speech and language therapy services and to 29 typically developing bilingual controls. The two groups were matched on age, exposure to Italian, age of first exposure to Italian, primary caregiver education and non-verbal IQ. The ability to learn vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology was assessed through the use of a test-teach-retest format, and subsequently compared to the results of a non-word repetition task and a parent report on the child’s first language development. Overall, the Italian adaptation of the DAPPLE was found to discriminate the two groups of children. In the vocabulary subtest, statistically significant between-group differences were found on the receptive pre-test and on the immediate post-teaching naming task. Pre-test and post-test measures, as well as the children’s pre- to post-gains, differentiated the two groups in both the sentence structure and phonology tasks. Finally, significant inter-correlations were observed among the scores derived from the dynamic assessment, the results of the non-word repetition task and the parent report, which seemingly confirmed the pre-diagnostic accuracy of the proposed screening tool.
Child Language Teaching and Therapy
Discriminating disorder from difference using dynamic assessment with bilingual children2013 •
The DAPPLE (Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers’ Proficiency in Learning English) is currently being developed in response to a clinical need. Children exposed to English as an additional language may be referred to speech and language therapy because their proficiency in English is not the same as their monolingual peers. Some, but not all, of these children are likely to have a core language learning difficulty. Clinicians need to be able to distinguish disorder from difference due to a child’s language learning context. The assessment used a test–teach–test format to examine children’s ability to learn vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology. The assessment, which takes less than 60 minutes to administer, was given to 26 children who were bilingual: 12 currently on a speech and language therapy caseload and 14 children matched for age and socio-economic status who had never been referred to speech and language therapy. The DAPPLE data clearly discriminated the two groups. The...
The Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers’ Proficiency in Learning English (DAPPLE) was developed in response to a clinical need to obtain information about bilingual children’s English language learning ability, particularly in the absence of detailed information regarding their proficiency in their other language/s. The assessment looked at children’s responses to opportunities to learn in the three areas of vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology (speech sounds). Twelve bilingual children aged between 3 and 5 years who had been referred to speech and language therapy were assessed. Their responses across the three areas were explored to derive profiles of strength and weakness across language areas. One of the 12 children was found to possess good language learning abilities across all areas, which may reflect an inappropriate referral. All of the remaining children demonstrated difficulties with learning within one or more areas of the DAPPLE, with one child having difficultie...
Due to the difficulties in differentiating bilingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) from bilingual children with temporary language difficulties that may be caused by heterogeneous language input, language assessments of bilingual children are challenging for clinicians. Research demonstrates that assessments of bilingual children should be in all the languages a bilingual child speaks. This can be arduous for clinicians, but computerised screening approaches provide potential solutions. MuLiMi is a new web-based platform designed to automatise screening procedures for bilingual children at risk of DLD. To validate this procedure and investigate its reliability, 36 Spanish-speaking children, aged 4–6 years old, living in Italy, were tested remotely using the Italian–Spanish MuLiMi DLD screening. Sixteen of the participants were previously diagnosed with DLD. L2 (second or societal language) as well as L1 (first or family language) language abilities in static (n...
2008 •
This study aims to describe in detail the linguistic skills of a large group of SLI participants. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of age-related effects on their linguistic performance and to whether a linguistic assessment of a narrative task can capture language impairments that might not be adequately pointed out by standardized neuropsychological tests assessing linguistic functions.
2013 •
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
Assessment of Bilingual Children for Identification of Language Impairment: Current Findings and Implications for Practice2008 •
Journal of speech, language, …
Real-Word and Nonword Repetition in Italian-Speaking Children with Specific Language Impairment: A Study of Diagnostic Accuracy2012 •
Research in Developmental Disabilities
Assessment of second language proficiency in bilingual children with specific language impairment: A clinical perspective2011 •
2013 •
The Bilingual Early Language Assessment (BELA) was developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education for the Cambridge Public School District in 2002 to respond to a growing need for an assessment in multiple languages. The BELA is available in 11 different languages and can be downloaded at no cost. However there is no psychometric data available on the BELA to inform end users regarding the quality of the measure. This paper reports on a pilot study investigating the psychometric properties of the English and Spanish BELA including the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity of the BELA with the Preschool Language Scale-4.
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2023 •
مراكز صنع القرار في إيران
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