Dynamic Assessment of Narrative Skills for Identifying Developmental Language Disorder in Monolingual and Bilingual French-Speaking Children

Hadjadj, O., Kehoe, M., & Delage, H. (2024). Dynamic assessment of narrative skills for identifying developmental language disorder in monolingual and bilingual French-speaking children. Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools, 55(1), 130–151. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_LSHSS-23-00054

Narratives are useful for assessing language skills in children, covering various domains like vocabulary and grammar. Typically, kids start storytelling with basic plots by age 5 and progress to more complex narratives by age 9. Children with language disorders struggle with both the structure (macrostructure) and details of stories (microstructure). While it is simpler to assess monolingual children for language disorders, bilingual children often are misdiagnosed due to less accurate assessment tools. In bilingual children, exposure time to each language along with age of learning second language are crucial when determining the storytelling abilities, with those exposed to a language later showing weaker language skills, resembling monolingual children with language disorders. Assessing bilingual children in all their languages is crucial to avoid misdiagnosis, but it's often challenging due to language diversity. Various tools, like parental questionnaires and language samples, can help evaluate bilingual children's language skills effectively. Dynamic assessment evaluates children's learning potential rather than static knowledge. It's suggested that children with language disorders have lower learning potential. DA involves teaching phases to improve performance between pre-and post-tests, aiding diagnosis accuracy. Because of its unbiased nature, this study used DA to assess various linguistic skills, including narratives, especially beneficial for diagnosing language disorders in bilingual children.

The main goal of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Dynamic Assessment in distinguishing DLD and typical language development in French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children. Children (6-11 years old) were given a storytelling task before learning about story elements, then tested again. The test involved 12 questions: 8 focused on story grammar elements (macro-structure) and 4 focused on connectors (microstructure). Results showed no differences in storytelling ability between monolingual and bilingual children on macrostructure or microstructure elements. Children with (DLD) had lower scores than typically developing (TD) children, especially in microstructure elements.

This study provides further evidence that dynamic assessment can be useful in assessing the language abilities of bilingual children. The greater difficulty with story microstructure for children with DLD may indicate the need for tailored teaching methods.

Blogger: Diya Nair is a second year MSc student under the supervision of Dr Lisa Archibald.

Relations between teacher talk characteristics and child language in spoken-language deaf and hard-of-hearing classrooms

Duncan, M.K., & Lederberg, A.R. (2018). Relations between teacher talk characteristics and child language in spoken-language deaf and hard-of-hearing classrooms. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61, 2977-2995. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-17-0475

Children with hearing loss have difficulty learning spoken language. This impacts their literacy (reading and writing) skills as well. These children frequently have difficulty learning vocabulary simply by hearing words used, which is the way hearing children often learn new words. Children with hearing loss also have difficulty with syntax (putting words together to form sentences), likely due to the difficulties hearing key word endings or morphemes. Hearing impaired children perform significantly lower than their hearing peers on measures of both vocabulary and morphosyntax.

Duncan and Lederberg explain that past research has shown that certain aspects of adult language use can impact language development in hearing children. Interventions have been developed for hearing children employing these features of adult language, in particular through the use of certain characteristics of teacher talk. These teacher talk characteristics include:

1. Reformulation: repeating and expanding the child’s statement, modelling more adult-like language
2. Language elicitations: invitations to the child to respond with a single word or a short list of possible responses (closed elicitations), or to respond with longer or more complex responses (open-ended elicitations)
3. Explicit vocabulary instruction: the teacher provides a child-friendly definition and connects this new word to the child’s existing knowledge
4. Explicit grammar instruction: the explicit provision of grammar instruction
5. Wait time: allowing approximately 3 seconds after a language elicitation (e.g., a question) for the student to provide a response (allowing time to think about and form a higher-quality response)

While some research had been done on the impacts of parental language input and language development in hearing impaired children, little research has addressed the impacts of teacher language input for children with hearing loss. In this study, the authors addressed this gap, and did so with two goals. The first was to examine the characteristics of teacher talk being used in spoken language classrooms with hearing impaired children. The second was to determine the extent to which teacher talk relates to language gains for hearing impaired children in vocabulary and morphosyntax over a school year.

The authors examined the language (vocabulary and morphosyntax) scores of 68 hearing impaired children in kindergarten, grade one, and grade two. These students were from 25 classrooms in which spoken English was used exclusively. Language scores were collected in the fall and spring terms of the same school year. Teacher talk was observed, transcribed, and coded (for each of the 5 teacher talk characteristics) for a 20 minute period during the winter term.

When examining the characteristics of teacher talk used in the classrooms with hearing impaired students, they found that the most frequent of the teacher talk characteristics was the use of closed language elicitations. Open-ended language elicitations were frequently used as well, but to a lesser degree. While imitating the students’ statements verbatim was rare, reformulation of their statements was quite common. Use of explicit vocabulary instruction varied between teachers, with some using it once every two minutes, and others using it only a couple of times or not at all within the observation window. Wait time was not frequently observed, but this may have been due to students responding immediately. Explicit grammar instruction was rare.

When determining the impact of teacher talk characteristics on spoken language development of hearing impaired students across the school year, the authors found that greater use of reformulation and explicit vocabulary instruction were predictors of gains in vocabulary, and that use of explicit vocabulary instruction was a predictor of gains in morphosyntax.

The implications of this study are that language input from classroom teachers has the ability to promote language development in their students with hearing impairment. The use of certain characteristics of teacher talk can benefit hearing impaired students’ development of vocabulary and morphosyntax (in particular, the use of reformulations to support vocabulary gains, and explicit vocabulary instruction to support both vocabulary and morphosyntax gains). Teacher training programs could be designed to support teachers in the development of skills in these areas.

Blogger: Rachel Benninger is a combined MClSc/PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald

Nonverbal executive functioning in relation to vocabulary and morphosyntax in preschool children with and without developmental language disorder

Everaert et al. (2023) Nonverbal executive functioning in relation to vocabulary and morphosyntax in preschool children with and without developmental language disorder. JSLHR, 66, 3954-73.

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have a persistent language difficulty that has a significant impact on school learning and everyday interactions. Executive functions are brain-based processes that allow us to create and sustain action towards goals while acting insightfully with others. Three cognitive resources support executive functions including the ability to update information held in mind or working memory, the ability to inhibit unnecessary information which, along with working memory, allows for selective attention, and cognitive flexibility, or the ability to put things together in unique ways. There are well-recognized links between executive functions and language learning. For example, working memory can support holding novel phonological forms in mind so that new vocabulary can be learned. In addition, putting words to the steps you need to complete helps you achieve goals. Given this link, there has been interest in examining executive functions in children with DLD.

One challenge with examining executive functions in children with DLD is that many executive functions tasks involve language. Indeed, systematic reviews has reported that children with DLD differ substantially from their typically developing peers when compared on verbally-loaded executive function tasks. The group difference, however, while reliable, is considerably smaller when the groups are compared on nonverbal function tasks such as recalling the sequence of indicated blocks.

This study examined the relationship between language (vocabulary; morphosyntax) and nonverbal executive function measures in 3-6 year old children with and without DLD. The children with DLD scored significantly lower than the typically developing group on all four executive function measures. An executive function factor was found to add significant predictive value to morphosyntax but not vocabulary performance in children with DLD. For typically developing children, executive functions predicted both vocabulary and morphosyntax. Diagnosis (DLD or not) was not a significant moderator of these relationships.

These results highlight the importance of using strategies to scaffold executive functions when providing language-based interventions with a high verbal load such as sentence-level activities. Strategies might include repeating information, providing visual supports, and breaking the task into smaller steps.

Blogger: Lisa Archibald

Playful punctuation in primary children’s narrative writing

Burrell, A., & Beard, R. (2022). Playful punctuation in primary children’s narrative writing. Research Papers in Education, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2022.2125053

Language play has been defined as any use of language that is creative and unusual. This article focused on language play through punctuation. This study investigated children's use of playful punctuation in narrative writing. The data were derived from a previous study focused on writing development in the 9–11 year olds and identified three attainment sub-groups: (i) the highest-attaining children in Year 6, (ii) children with the lowest scores in both Year 6 and Year 5, and (iii) children with the most significant increase in attainment between Year 5 and Year 6. The analysis examined the purpose and organization, grammar, vocabulary, style, punctuation, spelling, and handwriting aspects of writing. The analysis of 71 stories revealed diverse playful punctuation, with notable usage of quotation marks, exclamation marks, and question marks, while other elements like asterisks and interrobangs were used less frequently. Clear variations were observed among attainment groups in the content and extent of playful punctuation. The results suggest that narrative writing provides opportunities for creative and playful punctuation use by 10–11 year-olds, prompting further investigation into such linguistic play. The study also noted variations in punctuation use among individual children, highlighting stylistic choices. Some children favored certain punctuation marks, such as dashes or exclamation marks, to emphasize specific narrative effects. Additionally, the study observed unconventional uses of punctuation, like elongated ellipses (the use of several full stops together, often used to express hesitation) and the interrobang (the use of exclamation mark and a question mark together), showcasing individual creativity in punctuation application.

Blogger: Diya Nair is an MSc student working under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Archibald.