bilingual assessment slides.pdf

Bilingual Assessment

What can we learn from testing English?

Elizabeth D. Peña, Ph.D. CCC
University of California, Irvine

Developmental Language Disorder

phonology
grammar
vocabulary
10% Often invisible
social skills
learning
memory

Challenges in BILINGUAL Assessment

Second language learning looks like DLD
First language loss looks like DLD
Language Dominance
Age of first English exposure
Percent of current exposure
Test domain (by language experience)
Not enough bilingual clinicians (about 4-6% of SLPs are bilingual)

Best Results when we test in BOTH

But, can we get any information when we test in English

Child’s level of experience in English
Age of first exposure
Current exposure

Experience in the L2

Experience in English

1 years experience
30% or more exposure

What we test

	Example	English Dominant		Balanced Bilingual		Spanish Dominant
TD	DLD	TD	DLD	TD	DLD
Passive	The boy was hugged by the girl	.92	.53	.50	.32	.70	.25
3rd Person Singular	Runs	.89	.55	.72	.27	.54	.23
Possessive	teacher's	.88	.50	.60	.19	.44	.09
Question Inversion	Is the bus at the school?	.75	.35	.63	.18	.57	.14
Plural Noun	Boxes	.91	.43	.69	.38	.57	.34
Regular Past	Dropped	.79	.63	.54	.17	.43	.17
Negative	don't burn the toast	.94	.90	.78	.31	.59	.22
Copula	He is tall.	.92	.80	.88	.40	.85	.53
Relative Clause	...that was on the stove	.78	.53	.66	.19	.59	.10
Irregular Past	Broke	.60	.10	.31	.10	.21	.04
Prepositional Phrase	between the houses	.42	.55	.45	.25	.41	.18

Bedore, L.M., Peña, E.D., Anaya, J., Nieto, R., Lugo-Neris, M. & Baron, A. (2018).
Patterns of Language Impairment in the Context of English as a Second Language. Language,
Speech, & Hearing Services in Schools. 49 (2), 277-291.

Task type	HSE		BESE		HEE
TD	DLD	TD	DLDTD
Associations	.38	.03	.42	.16	.41	.14
Analogies	.40	.03	.40	.36	.34	.29
Definitions	.51	.21	.57	.40	.66	.49
Functionals	.69	.21	.79	.60	.85	.57
Characteristics	.83	.52	.88	.76	.98	.86
Similarities and differences	.44	.06	.46	.12	.59	.43
Definitions	.60	.27	.68	.48	.89	.43
Functions	.55	.39	.93	.69	.69	.43
Similarities and differences	.85	.65	.83	.60	1	.43
Characteristics	.61	.21	.67	.32	.73	.42
Similarities and differences	.83	.39	.87	.40	.89	.29

Participants

Participants			Items for English dominant	Items for balanced bilinguals
English dominant (n = 80)	Sensitivity	80.0	50.0	20.0
Specificity	94.3	100.0	100.0
Balanced bilinguals (n = 154)	Sensitivity	91.7	83.3	66.7
Specificity	60.8	86.9	92.3
Spanish dominant (n = 145)	Sensitivity	100.0	90.3	80.6
Specificity	44.7	67.5	82.5

Pratt, Peña, & Bedore (in preparation)

Elizabeth D. Peña
University of California, Irvine
edpena@uci.edu
@HABLAlab
2languages2worlds.wordpress.com