Design of Spoken Language Tests for Hearing L1 Children

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Penny Roy ◽  
Shula Chiat
Keyword(s):  
Oral Language ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Language Problems

The identification of language problems and subsequent evaluation of interventions depend in part on the availability of useful and psychometrically robust assessments to determine the nature and severity of a child’s problems and monitor progress. This chapter addresses issues involved in the development of spoken language tests for L1 children and the ways in which they have been addressed, with reference to specific examples. Spoken language here refers to oral language, both receptive (comprehension) and expressive (production). The authors draw on a range of existing tests to illustrate the decisions that need to be made when assessing children’s language; they then discuss issues that arise in the development of new tests, drawing on examples of tests that the authors have themselves developed.

Research on Reading: What SLPs Want (or Need) to Know

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Language ◽  
Cognitive Skill ◽  
Language Intervention ◽  
Reading Teachers ◽  
Successful Therapy ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Reading Research ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Language Problems

Abstract As increasing numbers of speech language pathologists (SLPs) have embraced their burgeoning roles in written as well as spoken language intervention, they have recognized that there is much to be gained from the research in reading. While some SLPs reportedly fear they will “morph” into reading teachers, many more are confidently aware that SLPs who work with adult clients routinely use reading as one of their rehabilitation modalities. Reading functions as both a tool to reach language in adults, and as a measure of successful therapy. This advanced cognitive skill can serve the same purpose for children. Language is the foundational support to reading. Consequently spoken language problems are often predictors of reading and writing challenges that may be ahead for the student (Juel & Deffes, 2004; Moats, 2001; Wallach, 2004). A targeted review of reading research may assist the SLP to appreciate the language/reading interface.

Beyond Herodotus

2020 ◽  
pp. 178-240
Author(s):  
Heidi Feldman ◽  
Susan Goldin-Meadow ◽  
Lila R. Gleitman
Keyword(s):  
Oral Language ◽  
Communication System ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Sign System

Deaf children who are unable to acquire oral language naturally and who are not exposed to a standard manual language can spontaneously develop a structured sign system that has many of the properties of natural spoken language. This communication system appears to be largely the invention of the child himself rather than that of the caretakers

Who Rules the Language?

2021 ◽  
pp. 198-213
Author(s):  
Nicolau Dols
Keyword(s):  
Oral Language ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Territorial Conflict ◽  
Personal Competence ◽  
Prescriptive Grammar

Greater attention is paid to oral language by the new prescriptive grammar of Catalan recently issued by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, and several prescriptive or guiding texts on the same topic published by Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua have put under focus a territorial conflict on language authority and raised questions on the limits between external authority and personal competence in a field (spoken language) especially favorable for the persistence of diversity. This chapter offers a discussion on prescriptivism and standardization in contemporary Catalan, and the conflict experienced on two axes: horizontal or territorial and vertical or bottom-up/top-down options in prescriptivism.

Design of Signed Language Tests for Deaf L1 Children

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-40
Author(s):  
Rosalind Herman ◽  
Katherine Rowley
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Age Appropriate ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Development Proceeds

Recent changes in the earlier diagnosis of deafness and improved amplification options have meant that deaf children increasingly have better opportunities to develop spoken language. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of children continue to use signed language as a first language (L1), including deaf and hearing children in deaf signing families and deaf children in hearing families where families use signed language in the home. For both groups, mastery of sign language as an L1 is important because it paves the way to communication and also because it provides the basis for development of spoken language, in either its oral or written form, as a second language (L2). It is crucial that signed language development proceeds in an age-appropriate manner, and assessments of signed language are therefore important to ensure that this is the case. However, the development of effective tests of signed language acquisition is not without challenges. This chapter presents these challenges and other issues and gives examples of how available tests seek to overcome them.

scholarly journals Enduring Advantages of Early Cochlear Implantation for Spoken Language Development

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 643-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann E. Geers ◽  
Johanna G. Nicholas
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implantation ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Language Outcomes ◽  
Prospective Longitudinal Study ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Age Appropriate ◽  
Added Benefit ◽  
Device Use ◽  
Spoken Language Skills ◽  
Prospective Longitudinal

Purpose In this article, the authors sought to determine whether the precise age of implantation (AOI) remains an important predictor of spoken language outcomes in later childhood for those who received a cochlear implant (CI) between 12 and 38 months of age. Relative advantages of receiving a bilateral CI after age 4.5 years, better pre-CI-aided hearing, and longer CI experience were also examined. Method Sixty children participated in a prospective longitudinal study of outcomes at 4.5 and 10.5 years of age. Twenty-nine children received a sequential second CI. Test scores were compared with normative samples of hearing age mates, and predictors of outcomes were identified. Results Standard scores on language tests at 10.5 years of age remained significantly correlated with age of first cochlear implantation. Scores were not associated with receipt of a second, sequentially acquired CI. Significantly higher scores were achieved for vocabulary as compared with overall language, a finding not evident when the children were tested at younger ages. Conclusion Age-appropriate spoken language skills continued to be more likely with younger AOI, even after an average of 8.6 years of additional CI use. Receipt of a second implant between ages 4 and 10 years and longer duration of device use did not provide significant added benefit.

Validating automated speaking tests

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared Bernstein ◽  
Alistair Van Moere ◽  
Jian Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Concurrent Validity ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Stable Relationship ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Fully Automatic ◽  
Oral Proficiency Interviews ◽  
Arabic And English

This paper presents evidence that supports the valid use of scores from fully automatic tests of spoken language ability to indicate a person’s effectiveness in spoken communication. The paper reviews the constructs, scoring, and the concurrent validity evidence of ‘facility-in-L2’ tests, a family of automated spoken language tests in Spanish, Dutch, Arabic, and English. The facility-in-L2 tests are designed to measure receptive and productive language ability as test-takers engage in a succession of tasks with meaningful language. Concurrent validity studies indicate that scores from the automated tests are strongly correlated with the scores from oral proficiency interviews. In separate studies with learners from each of the four languages the automated tests predict scores from the live interview tests as well as those tests predict themselves in a test-retest protocol (r = 0.77 to 0.92). Although it might be assumed that the interactive nature of the oral interview elicits performances that manifest a distinct construct, the closeness of the results suggests that the constructs underlying the two approaches to oral assessment have a stable relationship across languages.

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