English Language Narratives of Filipino Children.

PURPOSE: The current study focuses on describing the English language narrative skills of children who have been exposed to the Filipino language. METHOD: Eight children between the ages of 6;0 (years;months) and 7;7 who spoke primarily English but who were exposed to the Filipino language at home participated. Each child produced three narrative samples based on wordless picture books. Samples were analyzed for narrative complexity as well as measures of productivity and grammaticality. RESULTS: The complexity of children's narratives was comparable to that reported in the literature for monolingual English-speaking children. Grammaticality measures show use of an average of 16.55% Filipino-influenced English forms across three stories. The observed patterns of Filipino-influenced English were predictable based on the comparison of English and Filipino structures. Variability in maze use was related to the amount of exposure to Filipino. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Care should be taken to evaluate grammaticality with respect to nonstandard English forms predicted by the rules of the language in contact with English. Further, maze use may be related to level of exposure to another language and should be further explored when using such information in language evaluation.

Conceptual Versus Monolingual Scoring: When Does It Make a Difference?

PURPOSE: This study evaluates the extent to which bilingual children produce the same or overlapping responses on tasks assessing semantic skills in each of their languages and whether classification analysis based on monolingual or conceptual scoring can accurately classify the semantic development of typically developing (TD) bilingual children. METHOD: In Study 1, 55 TD children (ages 4;0 [years;months] to 7;11) from bilingual backgrounds named characteristic properties of familiar items. The extent to which children produced overlapping responses in each of their languages and their errors were examined. In Study 2, 40 TD children (ages 5;0 to 6;1), group matched for age and bilingual language exposure, responded to the Phase 2 version of the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA; E. D. Peña, V. Gutierrez-Clellen, A. Iglesias, B. A. Goldstein, & L. M. Bedore, in development). Conceptual and monolingual scores were compared to determine the extent to which these were comparable for groups of children. RESULTS: The results of Study 1 indicated that TD children from bilingual backgrounds are more likely to produce unique than overlapping responses when they respond to test items. Children were more likely to code switch when tested in Spanish than in English, but they were more likely to produce errors in English. In Study 2, monolingual and bilingual children achieved comparable conceptual scores. For Spanish-speaking bilingual children, the conceptual score was more likely to be in the average range of the monolingual children than was their monolingual score. For testing in English, monolingual and conceptual scores were similar. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Bilingual children will benefit from conceptual scoring, especially when they are tested in Spanish.

Task Familiarity: Effects on the Test Performance of Puerto Rican and African American Children.

Two studies compared the performance of Puerto Rican and African American Head Start children on presumably familiar (description) and unfamiliar (one-word labeling) test tasks. Results indicated that children performed significantly better on the familiar test task, and that the familiar task was more sensitive in differentiating children who were typically developing from those with low language ability. Implications for the use of standardized tests, local norms, and dynamic assessment with culturally/linguistically diverse children are discussed.

Comparison of Spanish, English, and Bilingual Children's Performance Across Semantic Tasks.

PURPOSE: This study investigated predominantly Spanish-speaking, predominantly English-speaking, and Spanish-English bilingual children's performance on a battery of semantic tasks. METHOD: Six semantic tasks (associations, characteristic properties, categorization, functions, linguistic concepts, and similarities and differences) were developed in Spanish and English. The tasks contained comparable items but were not direct translations of each other. Each task consisted of expressive and receptive items. Predominantly Spanish-speaking children completed the tasks in Spanish, predominantly English-speaking children completed the tasks in English, and bilingual children completed the tasks in Spanish and English. RESULTS: Children in all three groups achieved similar average levels of performance on the assessment battery. However, there were differences in the patterns of performance for English and Spanish, as well as group performance differences when compared in the same language. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: These findings highlight the importance of testing bilingual children in both of their languages and across a variety of semantic tasks in order to gain insight into bilingual children's semantic knowledge.

Narrative Discourse in Bilingual Children: Language and Task Effects.

PURPOSE: This study investigated the effect of language on Spanish-English bilingual children's production of narrative samples elicited in two ways. METHOD: Twelve bilingual (Spanish-English-speaking) children ranging in age from 4;0 (years;months) to 6;11 who were fluent speakers of English as a second language produced two narratives-one elicited by using a wordless picture book and another by using a static picture. The children produced stories for each task in each language, for a total of four stories. For the book task, the story complexities were compared across both languages. Stories were scored for complexity of story grammar and the inclusion of specific narrative elements. Both stories in each language were further analyzed for productivity (total words, number of C-units, and mean length of C-unit). The grammaticality (proportion of grammatically acceptable C-units) and the proportion of utterances influenced by the nontarget language was compared across each language and story task. RESULTS: Children produced narratives of equal complexity for the book task regardless of language. However, children used more attempts and initiating events in Spanish, while producing more consequences in English. The picture task yielded mixed results, and these were not compared quantitatively. There were differences in the two task conditions with respect to the children's use of Spanish influenced English and English-influenced Spanish. Although children were equally productive in both languages, they used proportionally more Spanish-influenced utterances in the book task. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The results demonstrate the importance of considering the test language when eliciting narratives from bilingual children and the type of the narrative task for eliciting a productive and complex narrative.

Dynamic Assessment of Diverse Children: A Tutorial.

Dynamic assessment (DA) has been advocated as an alternative and/or supplemental approach to traditional standardized testing with children who are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD). However, there is great variability across DA methods and applications, as well as limited information concerning which methods and procedures may be best suited to differentiate language disorder from difference. In this tutorial, DA methods are compared with respect to their assessment applications. Next, an assessment protocol recommended for the identification of language disorder versus difference is described. Finally, examples of two Spanish-English bilingual children are used to show how the protocol may be useful to assess children's language-learning potential and to minimize misdiagnosis.

Measures of Language Development in Fictional Narratives of Latino Children.

PURPOSE: This preliminary study was designed to determine whether commonly used measures of language productivity, sentence organization, and story structure were sensitive to developmental differences in narratives produced by Latino preschool children from a low-socioeconomic status (SES) community. METHOD: Twenty-four children, divided equally into younger and older groups, produced oral narratives that corresponded with the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Their narratives were analyzed for productivity (total number of words, total number of different words), sentence organization (number of utterances, mean length of C unit in words, and percentage of grammatically acceptable utterances), and story structure (complete and incomplete narrative episodes). RESULTS: The length of children's narratives did not differ significantly by age. However, older Latino children produced stories that contained longer sentences, a higher proportion of grammatically acceptable sentences, and more complete episodes than did younger children. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: These results suggest that measures of language productivity (such as total number of words and number of different words) that reflect developmental differences in monolingual mainstream preschoolers may not be sensitive indicators of narrative language development in young Latino children from low-SES environments. However, measures of syntactic accuracy and episodic structure are likely to be valid indicators of developmental changes in these children's narrative abilities.

Language Sample Analysis in Spanish-Speaking Children: Methodological Considerations.

The purposes of this article are (a) to discuss issues related to the selection and development of language assessment procedures for children who speak Spanish and English based on spontaneous language samples and (b) to show how available procedures can be applied to research and clinical aims with these children. Sociolinguistic influences in the language performance of Spanish-speaking children, including patterns of language shift, differences in the amount of exposure to each of a bilingual's languages, and contextual effects of different language-learning environments, are discussed. Methodological issues and effects of codeswitching and dialect are examined concerning use of the Developmental Assessment of Spanish Grammar (DASG), mean length of response in words (MLR-w), mean length of terminable unit (MLTU), and mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU-m). Measures of Spanish grammar with diagnostic potential are proposed. Clinical suggestions for the language assessment of Spanish-speaking children with different levels of English proficiency and research implications are discussed.