Assessment of Bilingual Children: What Every Monolingual SLP Should Know
I'm teaching a Cultural Pluralism course this semester. It's always a challenge because there are first and second year graduate students and sometimes a special education student who needs the course as an elective sits in the course. Last weeks topic was a topic near and dear to my heart, monolingual clinicians assessing bilingual children. There are beliefs that I know influence the assessment protocol. These are basic ideas about the children and the assessment process. I believe they're important for all clinicians to understand and use when making decisions concerning the results they obtain from a bilingual child. I'll call them myths and counterarguments. Myths about bilingual children: Learning a second language is easy so any child can learn a second language. Adults are the ones who are always complaining that its hard to learn a second language, but children.that's a different story, they should be able to learn a second language with ease. The reality is that all children learn a second language with some difficulty and some with more difficulty. Many children have that special gift of not worrying about the mistakes they make when they talk. They're use to people correcting them when a word is said incorrectly or a sentence is not quite right. On the other hand, adults just don't like to be corrected, especially in public. So sometimes it appears that children do learn the language with ease. This myth is related to the belief that all children should learn a second language within a specific time frame, lets say one year. If a child is not learning English quickly, something must be wrong with the child. Children may have other factors that may influence the learning of a second language, including not wanting to learn English. Don't always expect children to learn English in your timeframe, look at their situation and the possible factors that may be inhibiting the learning of English. Learning the second language early is better than learning it later in life. This is true if you're looking at phonology. The younger the child the more native like is the phonology for both languages. But research tends to lean toward the older student when it comes to better control of syntax and semantics. The recommendation from early childhood second language acquisition is that children need to first have a good command of the first language before learning a second language. Three years of age isn't the time to expose the child to another language. Better yet, would be to wait until five years of age. This myth influences the assessment process because children at the preschool age lose the ability to speak the home language faster than older children who are learning English. The test results may appear that the child doesn't have a language base. But what may have happened is that our educational system has made a group of children more semilingual rather than bilingual. It's important that the clinician facilitate the home language through parent home programs if the clinician doesn't speak that home language. The home language must be maintained so that the child can develop both languages well. good bilingualism means equal ability in two languages. This myth comes from the belief that once bilingual always bilingual and that the proficiency in the two languages don't shift. A child can become more Spanish proficient by spending a month in Mexico and lose some ability in English during that time. There are few bilinguals who would say that they have equal abilities in both languages. Most bilinguals have better proficiency in one language for topics, domains, and persons. This myth influences how clinicians view whether a child is really bilingual. When a child is tested, the clinician may believe that the test results should indicate equal abilities or the child is described as deficient in one of the languages. It could be that the child is developing English or the home language, or losing the home language, rather than that the child is language disordered. Defining a language disorder in this group takes more than language scores on a few tests. code switching means a lack of vocabulary or word finding difficulties. Code switching is the alternating use of two languages at the word, phrase, and sentence level and when there is a break in the phonologies. There are some general rules about code switchers. The most important one is that you code switch only with other bilinguals, not monolinguals. Another important concept is that the person who code switches does so because it expresses an idea better in the other language not because they lack the vocabulary. Word finding problems in children are easily determined by asking parents if the child always had difficulty remembering the names of common objects.
The second area besides myths that will influence the assessment of bilingual children is the adequacy of the case history and information gained from school records. high risk factors & family concerns: The family is usually the first to recognize a problem. Parents' report on pregnancy, prenatal, perinatal conditions are all important data. Even more important are the developmental milestones and other indications of oral apraxia, receptive language difficulties, phonological disorders, oral motor disorder, and family history of language impairment. cognitive or intelligence testing: The psychologist or diagnostician's report is important. There has to be some idea of cognitive functioning for the clinician to determine if this is part of the difficulty in language learning. Do the language test results reflect similar results to the cognitive functioning testing, or is it radically different? There are other variables that always need to be assessed, such as language proficiency, exposure to English, and type of classroom arrangements (e.g., bilingual education or ESL).
Using only tests and language samples to determine if a language disorder exists is still a questionable practice. We still have a lot to learn. Therefore, my practice is to look for an additional high risk factor (see above) that will add to the evidence that a child is truly speech and language impaired. Something else must exist with this language learning problem in the bilingual child so that I feel confident that I'm not putting a typical bilingual child who is going through language transition into special education. Maybe this practice is too cautious, but I would rather not put children in special services. I would rather see better regular education classrooms that meet the needs of children from bilingual backgrounds.
References
- McLaughlin, B. (1984). Second-language acquisition in childhood: Vol. 1 preschool children (2nd ed.) Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- McLaughlin, B. (1985). Second-Language acquisition in childhood: Vol2. School-age children (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Garcia, O. & Baker, C. (1995). Policy and practice in bilingual education: A reader extending the foundations. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
- Genesee, F. & Hamayan, E.V. (1994). Educating second language children: The whole child, the whole curriculum, the whole community. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
- Baker, C. (1995). A parents' and teachers' guide to bilingualism. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters.
- Bialystok, E., & Hakuta, K. (1994). In other words: The science and psychology of second language acquisition. New York: Basic Books.
- Harding, E., & Riley, P. (1986). The bilingual family: A handbook for parents. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
