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Andersson, Ketty, et al.
(författare)
Impact of language background and school factors on core language skills
2019
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat) abstract
Bilingual children are at a disadvantage when compared to monolingual norms in language assessment. Monolingual assessment fails to acknowledge the asymmetrically distributed linguistic competence of bilingual children, for example, different levels of mastery of family and school related concepts in the first and second languages, respectively. Consequently, monolingual assessment results in an overidentification of language impairment in bilingual populations. However, other factors, in many communities associated with bilingualism, may also yield low results in language assessments. We investigated the Swedish CELF-4 Core subscales for receptive language and grammatical production of over 220 7-8-year-old children, all students in the classrooms of teachers participating in an ongoing practice-embedded intervention aimed at modifying mainstream primary school teachers’ verbal and nonverbal instructional communication. The student sample is representative of a southern Swedish urban and suburban population, with approximately 50 percent of students reported by parents to use at least one other language on a daily basis, in addition to the Swedish used in school, although with great differences in proportions, with participating schools ranging between 0 and 95 percent bilingual students. Multiple linear regression was used to assess the contribution of bilingualism, parental education level, school district and enrolment in extra-curricular activities on CELF-4 Core scores. In isolation, bilingualism predicted 38 percent of the variance in the CELF-4 Core scores, p < 0,01. With parental education level, school district and enrolment in extra-curricular activities entered the total variance explained by the model increased to 54 percent. However, the unique contribution of bilingualism was reduced to 9 percent. The results highlight the need to look beyond bilingualism in language assessment and educational management of bilingual children and adolescents, and to consider other explanations to academic struggle. Furthermore, alternative interventions must be considered and applied proportionately to their respective impact on the individual’s development. Evidence-based, high-quality language instruction in school must be complemented by community-based interventions aimed at increasing the parental education level and at providing counsel to parents and families on factors associated with academic advancement, e.g. extra-curricular activities. Measures must also be taken to reduce the gap between schools in order to avoid the double dose of disadvantage often experienced by bilingual children and adolescents and their families in areas of socioeconomic stress.
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Asker-Árnason, Lena, et al.
(författare)
Process and product in writing : A methodological contribution to the assessment of written narratives in 8-12 year old Swedish children using ScriptLog
2008
Ingår i: Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology. - Oslo : Scandinavian University Press. - 1401-5439 .- 1651-2022. ; 33:3, s. 143-152
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Twenty-seven children, with typical language development (TLD), 8-10 years old and 10-12 years old, were assessed with keystroke-logging in order to investigate their narrative writing. Measures of the writing process and the written product were used. One purpose was to explore how children produce written narratives in on-line production, and to relate the writing process to the written product. The results showed that those children who produced the final text faster, also wrote stories that comprised of more words. In the group of older children, children with better narrative ability used less pause time than those with worse ability, and the girls were faster writers than the boys. We believe that keystroke-logging gives valuable information for the assessment of young children's writing and that it is a potentially valid assessment tool for children from about 10 years of age.
10.
Asker-Árnason, Lena, et al.
(författare)
Spoken and written narratives in Swedish children and adolescents with hearing impairment
2012
Ingår i: Communication Disorders Quarterly. - : Sage Publications. - 1538-4837 .- 1525-7401. ; 33:3, s. 131-145
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Twenty 10- to 18-year-old children and adolescents with varying degrees of hearing impairment (HI) and hearing aids (HA), ranging from mild-moderate to severe, produced picture-elicited narratives in a spoken and written version. Their performance was compared to that of 63 normally hearing (NH) peers within the same age span. The participants with HI and NH showed similar patterns regarding intragroup correlations between corresponding measures of spoken and written narratives. However, the participants with HI had significantly less diverse language than the NH group. The participants with poorer hearing (higher best ear hearing level [BEHL]) produced spoken and written narratives comprising more content words and they also produced written narratives that were less lexically diverse than the participants with better hearing (lower BEHL). The difference as to lexical skills emphasizes the importance of focusing on these skills in the group of children with HI. However, the results give support for a quite optimistic view on the development of narration in children with HI with HA, at least for picture-elicited narratives.
