Assessing Malaysian Chinese-English bilingual preschoolers using language sample measures

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual Malaysian children is grossly

underidentified for two reasons. First, there is an absence of locally-developed

norm-referenced language assessment tools. The challenge in developing a local

assessment tool comes from the inadequate knowledge of children’s English as it

develops in the bilingual environment. Second, the characteristics of Malaysian

English, a non-Standard form of English, are often confused with the features of SLI

in monolingual children learning Standard English. To date, the literature has no

information on SLI in bilingual children learning a non-Standard English because

research mainly focuses on bilingual Standard English and monolingual

non-Standard English.

Spontaneous language sample is the recommended language assessment tool for

bilingual Malaysian children because it provides quantitative and qualitative

information for language development and assessment in communities with complex

language environment. Phase 1 of the current study investigated the developmental

sensitivity of four language sample measures (LSMs), including mean length of

utterances (MLU), lexical diversity (D), the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn), and

frequency of code-switching (FCS), by examining the relationship between these

LSMs and age in 52 bilingual Chinese-English Malaysian children with normal

language development (NLD), aged between 3;06 and 6;09. Analyses showed a

highly significant linear relationship with age in D (r=.536) and IPSyn (r=.451),

moderately significant linear relationship with MLU (r=.364), but not in FCS. The

findings suggested that MLU, D, and IPSyn were developmentally sensitive to

non-Standard English in the bilingual Malaysian children studied.

Phase 2 compared the same measures obtained from nine children with SLI and

their age-matched controls from the NLD group in Phase 1. The SLI group had

significantly lower MLU and the IPSyn scores than the NLD group. Discriminant

function analysis indicated that the IPSyn alone classified children into SLI and NLD

groups at 77.8% classification accuracy. The four misclassified children, two in the

SLI and two in the NLD group, were aged below 4;06 years. MLU and the IPSyn

showed potential as SLI markers for bilingual Malaysian children. Two types of

error patterns were observed from the SLI group. The first pattern included verb

and the copula -be omissions which were also observed in younger children from the

NLD group. The second pattern was omission of prepositions which was not

observed in younger NLD group, reflected linguistic transfer from the first language.

Future research in this area is suggested to a) extend the age range of the

study to include older children to further verify the diagnostic potential of LSMs, b)

consider longitudinal research design so that language development over time can be

described and c) include non-linguistic measures given reports of these measures as

potential markers of SLI. As an initial study on bilingual children learning

non-Standard English, the current study provided empirical data for charting

language development and also suggested potential markers for SLI. The study can

serve as the basic framework not only for further research on other bilingual

non-Standard English-speaking groups but also for children with language

impairment secondary to developmental disorders in the same language group.