Language and Culture in Testing

Author(s):  
Franziska Schwabe ◽  
Alina A. von Davier ◽  
Micheline Chalhoub-Deville

Testing culturally and linguistically diverse populations challenges test developers and test users across the world. In the context of educational and psychological tests, validity and fairness issues associated with developing these tests have increased substantially due to significant changes in the test takers’ demographics. This chapter focuses on four interrelated issues pertaining to language and culture in testing (LCT): test purposes, constructs to be measured, target populations, and test construction and data analysis. All issues are discussed in the light of fairness and validity for test takers from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Special attention is given to language-minority test takers. The chapter combines research results from different perspectives with a special emphasis on work done in the fields of language assessment and psychometrics. Examples of language and educational content assessments are provided and discussed from different perspectives.

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Adeline Quinn ◽  
Margaret M. Leahy ◽  
Kathleen McTiernan

Background and objective: The Irish Travelling Community is a cultural group using a unique dialect – Traveller English. It has been established that some standardized, norm-referenced language measures are biased against culturally and linguistically diverse populations. In this study, the achievement of Traveller children on standardized language measures and on processing-dependent measures is compared with achievement of children from the Settled community on the same measures. Method: Twenty children aged 6–10 years, 10 each from Travelling and Settled communities, were assessed using the CELF-3 UK, and two processing-dependent measures to assess aspects of language development. Results and conclusions: Results indicate that Traveller children scored significantly lower than Settled children on the standardized language measures. In contrast, the use of processing-dependent measures showed few inter-group differences. The recommendation is that processing-dependent measures be used in addition to standardized measures to increase the validity of language assessment of Traveller children.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-345
Author(s):  
Abdul Wahid Bambang Suharto

This paper seeks to uncover A. Mustofa Bisri as a literary writer who “departs from Islamic boarding school” which conveys intellectual religiosity through poetry. The concept of thinking used in this paper by exposing poetry as text, the world of Islamic boarding school as a con- text, and the interrelations both in poetry and religious Islamic intellectu- als as contextualization. First, the intensity of the written poetry is based on the intellectualreligiosity in theIslamicboarding school, so it is reli- giously timeless, and beyond the limitations of language usage. Aspects of events, aspects of experience, and aspects of the view of life (weltan- schauung) unite in the particular language and culture. Secondly, the prin- ciple that the idiocencracy of religious poetry based on Islamic values in the form of a poetical language is important to mark one’s poet as the context of the poetical of A. Mustofa Bisri. It should be interpreted not only as a symptom of poetical language that breaks away from the mean- ing of poetry (the religious experience expressed and simultaneously dis- played in poetry), but also the dynamics interrelated between poets, po- ems, and cultural backgrounds that surround them. Third, the religious experience manifested in the language of poetry is the deepestform of religious intellectual abstraction, i.e., divined and cherished love. This condition is shaped by the crystallization of knowledge as an action in the deepest dimension of one’s humanity to voice inner perceptions. By loving God, people will love God’s creation, man and the universe, as he loves himself. By loving each other and the universe as God’s creation, a lover will treat himself as a person of faith and do good deeds, and remind each other to hold fast to the truth, and remind each other to be patient. The concept cannot be separated from the perspective of al-Qur’an and al-Hadith.


2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochel Lazewnik ◽  
Nancy Creaghead ◽  
Sandra Combs ◽  
Lesley Raisor-Becker

Abstract In today's school settings, speech-language pathologists are likely to engage in assessment, intervention, and consultation for students from culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Therefore, speech-language pathology graduate programs must make changes that will prepare monolingual and bilingual graduate students to meet the needs of these children. Graduate students can learn information about cultural and linguistic diversity through independent courses and when these topics are incorporated into all courses. Practicum placements and experiences with children from culturally and linguistically diverse populations in the community can provide the necessary skills. When practicum experiences with diverse children are not available, faculty may consider simulated experiences, as well as experiences with typical speakers from other linguistic and cultural backgrounds.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-345
Author(s):  
Abdul Wahid Bambang Suharto

This paper seeks to uncover A. Mustofa Bisri as a literary writer who “departs from Islamic boarding school” which conveys intellectual religiosity through poetry. The concept of thinking used in this paper by exposing poetry as text, the world of Islamic boarding school as a con- text, and the interrelations both in poetry and religious Islamic intellectu- als as contextualization. First, the intensity of the written poetry is based on the intellectualreligiosity in theIslamicboarding school, so it is reli- giously timeless, and beyond the limitations of language usage. Aspects of events, aspects of experience, and aspects of the view of life (weltan- schauung) unite in the particular language and culture. Secondly, the prin- ciple that the idiocencracy of religious poetry based on Islamic values in the form of a poetical language is important to mark one’s poet as the context of the poetical of A. Mustofa Bisri. It should be interpreted not only as a symptom of poetical language that breaks away from the mean- ing of poetry (the religious experience expressed and simultaneously dis- played in poetry), but also the dynamics interrelated between poets, po- ems, and cultural backgrounds that surround them. Third, the religious experience manifested in the language of poetry is the deepestform of religious intellectual abstraction, i.e., divined and cherished love. This condition is shaped by the crystallization of knowledge as an action in the deepest dimension of one’s humanity to voice inner perceptions. By loving God, people will love God’s creation, man and the universe, as he loves himself. By loving each other and the universe as God’s creation, a lover will treat himself as a person of faith and do good deeds, and remind each other to hold fast to the truth, and remind each other to be patient. The concept cannot be separated from the perspective of al-Qur’an and al-Hadith.


Author(s):  
Ashley M. Frazier

Abstract School speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are increasingly likely to serve children of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) parents or GLBT students as cultural and societal changes create growth in the population and increased willingness to disclose sexual orientation. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has a progressive nondiscrimination statement that includes sexual orientation as a protected status and strongly urges the membership to develop cultural competence as a matter of ethical service delivery. The purpose of this article is to describe cultural competence in relation to GLBT culture, discuss GLBT parent and student cultural issues as they are important in parent-school or student-school relations, and to provide suggestions for increasing sensitivity in these types of interactions. A list of resources is provided.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irma Maria Lontoh ◽  
Jenny Hilda Pakasi ◽  
Martha Salea-Warouw

The fishermen community is a community found in North Sulawesi, especially in the coastal area of Sario-Malalayang, Manado. With different cultural backgrounds, ethnicities, this group has its own uniqueness, especially in language. This research succeeded is finding expressions in the fishermen community in the coastal area of Sario-Malalayang. These expressions consist of forms of words, phrases, and clauses in accordance with the lingual forms of theory from Widdowson (1997: 3). The results of the study found a number of lingual forms in affixed words, which had a similar prefix as in the words ba-daseng, ba-kintu, ba-tono, ba-saoh, ba-pake. In addition, the majority of phrases contained in the results of the study are predominantly dominated by noun phrases, such as in the lips phrases of napo, puru loe, coolies, ikang itching, mulu sosoroka, gargantang tubir.This research also succeeded in exploring and discovering cultural meanings. The meanings in the form of words, such as ‘badaseng’, ‘sunga’, then the form of a phrase, like ‘puru loe’, ‘mulu sosoroka’, then sentence expressions in the form of expressions like ‘udang deng katang so kurang sama’, ‘kase wora mar jang talapas’, ‘karja cuma sampe di kuli aer’, etc. The expressions encountered generally contain various cultural meanings, namely advice, satire, ridicule, seduction, warning, insults, and despair. Based on the conclusion, the researcher suggests to the next researcher, to be more comprehensive related to the use of Manado Malay language expression in different background and contexts in order to get a whole description about expressions system of Manado Malay language, especially in the fishermen community in North Sulawesi.Keywords: fishermen community, language and culture


Author(s):  
Anna Wierzbicka

This chapter argues that a philosophical account of human epistemology needs to be complemented by a linguistic one, informed by analytical and empirical experience of cross-linguistic semantics. The author outlines such a complementary account, based on many decades of empirical and analytical research undertaken within the NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) approach. The main conclusion is that KNOW is an indefinable and universal human concept, and that there are four “canonical” frames in which this concept occurs across languages, the most basic one being the “dialogical” frame: “I know,” “I don’t know.” The author contends that both the questions and the answers concerning the “epistemology for the rest of the world” need to be anchored in some conceptual givens, derived neither from historically shaped Anglo English, nor from the European philosophical tradition, but from a more reliable, language- and culture-independent source; and the author shows how this can be done.


2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 602-606
Author(s):  
Sachiko Ide

The assumptions made by readers of Language in Society and other English-language academic publications, when they begin to read, are so widely shared that they are seldom reflected on or made explicit. These assumptions have to do with European traditions of scholarship; and over time, they have made their way around the world because of the unquestioned belief in their universal applicability. But other approaches do exist, although most are never featured in publications in Western languages. I commented on this situation long ago, but it persists to this day: “The work done by Japanese sociolinguists is virtually unknown to non-Japanese readers. The reason is probably that this work has developed independently of the Western disciplines. The fact that Japanese researchers have worked independently of the Western tradition has inevitably resulted in unique assumptions, orientations or approaches when viewed from an international perspective”.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaspal Naveel Singh

The Global South is a postcolonial imagined community that bears the potential to imagine powerful south-south solidarity between the struggles for decoloniality of diverse populations across the world. To prepare our field’s pan-global future, this year-in-review overrepresents literature on gender, sexuality and language from/on the Global South. This decolonial move aims to notice and promote southern tactics of resistance, southern epistemologies and southern theories and evaluate what can be learnt if we look southward on our way forward. Some literature from the Global North will be considered too. The review is structured using three overlapping foci: (1) embodied and linguistic resistance, (2) mediatisation and scale and (3) fragile masculinities. I conclude by suggesting that our research should stay locally situated and globally radical.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (05) ◽  
pp. 395-418
Author(s):  
Keisey Fumero ◽  
Michelle Torres-Chavarro ◽  
Carla Wood

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to examine and describe experiences and perceptions of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) serving children and families from culturally and linguistically diverse populations. Twenty SLPs were interviewed using an online audio platform regarding common practices, resources and supports, challenges, and communication. Participants' responses to the semi-structured questions were transcribed and analyzed to identify themes in experiences. Results suggested six overall themes including: considerations for assessment; cultural impact; linguistic access and barriers; professional preparedness; impact of COVID-19; and helpful tips and resources. The discussion includes recommendations and resources to address obstacles.


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