Abstract
Not so long ago there was little on offer in terms of suitable linguistic assessment for children from bilingual or minority ethnic backgrounds, and little in the way of evidence-based guidance for management of such children if they were found to have speech, language and/or communication needs (SLCN). Thus, children from these communities with SLCN were at risk of falling by the wayside. Although there is still much that needs to be done to ensure that we meet the needs of the children of our diverse society, recent research, alongside a welcome change in the general attitudes of the public, has led to some improvements in services for children who are bilingual or have English as an additional language (EAL). This special issue of Child Language Teaching and Therapy focuses on current, innovative research in the area of identification and assessment of the communication needs of such populations and considers the needs of professionals working with these children. In so doing this issue continues the discussion thread started in 2003’s special issue which looked at the complex area of bilingualism and EAL in the UK and the assessment of children’s language skills.
One of the many battles fought by practitioners and researchers alike has been to counteract the deficit model so often presented: that to be bilingual is seen as a ‘problem’, with negative connotations and effects. Two of the articles in this special issue underline the advantages that bilingualism brings. Wren, Hambly and Roulstone’s work looks at phonemic awareness in typically-developing children. Their review of various studies in the literature highlights the fact that in many cases research studies have shown little difference in performance between monolinguals and bilinguals and that, in fact, a number of bilingual children have advanced skills in phonemic awareness. The study reported by Greene, Peña and Bedore presents interesting data on code-mixing within populations of pre-school bilingual children: both those children who are at risk of language impairment and those deemed not to be at risk. Not surprisingly, Greene et al.’s research identifies the depth of linguistic competence needed, in two (or more) languages, in order that code-mixing may be used successfully to fill gaps in the lexicon.
The debate around comparison of bilinguals to monolingual peers is explored further by Chen and Lei, whose research evaluates the production of referring expressions in the oral narratives of Chinese–English bilingual children and their monolingual counterparts. Interestingly, the authors note that the production of referring expressions by the bilinguals in this study may well be unique.
Assessing bilingual children’s language and communication skills has proved a challenge in recent years but the need for suitable assessments has grown with the changing face of our society. The information collected in England for the School Census in January 2010 highlighted two important factors, which in turn affect our professional practice and the treatment of children in our care. The census revealed that in 2010 25.5% of primary school pupils and 21.4% of secondary school pupils in England, at compulsory school age and above, were of minority ethnic origin. In addition, in primary schools 16% of pupils and in secondary schools 11.6% of pupils had a first language other than English. Alongside the recognition that a proportion of bilingual children may be at risk of language impairment comes the need to be able to differentiate between language difficulties that arise from impairment and those that exist as a result of a child acquiring English as an additional language (EAL). Hasson, Camilleri, Jones, Smith and Dodd have focused their work on these two very different groups of children – i.e. bilinguals with language impairment and those with EAL – and have explored the efficacy of an assessment tool designed to examine the children’s ability to learn vocabulary, sentence structure and phonology and to identify disorder from ‘difference’ (i.e. EAL).
Two further articles report on children acquiring minority but official languages in their respective countries. Sharp and Mueller Gathercole respond to the recent interest in non-language-specific assessments to evaluate children’s language. Their study investigates the performance of Welsh–English bilingual children on a Welsh non-word repetition task and sounds a warning on the use of non-word repetition as a universal speech and language assessment tool. O’Toole and Hickey describe the themes emerging from interviews with speech and language therapists and psychologists who work with Irish–English bilingual children. An overriding theme is the issue of being obliged to report standardized test scores in order to secure additional resources for children with SLCN, but there being no such tests standardized on this population.
Two further articles consider the language environment for bilingual populations and the impact of this on communication. Crowe, McKinnon, McLeod and Ching’s fascinating study explores the language use and communication modes of 3-year-old children with hearing loss and associated factors. Their work looks at data from over 400 children, including over 100 from multilingual families, and examines the role of female caregivers’ communication modes and education levels as well as the role of male caregivers’ use of languages other than English (LOTEs) and children’s additional needs on the children’s communication mode. The study underlines the importance of understanding as fully as possible the links between children, their caregivers, the environment and linguistic and cultural factors in order to ensure appropriate educational provision.
MacLeod, Fabiano-Smith, Boegner-Pagé and Fontolliet return to an important discussion that has been vibrant for many years: that of the ‘one-parent, one-language’ approach in bringing children up bilingually. In their study, MacLeod et al. focus on receptive vocabulary development in German–French simultaneous bilinguals and the influences on this development of language exposure. Through careful analysis of their results, the authors then present an interesting discussion around ‘imbalanced exposure’ and its knock-on effects.
This special issue brings together some exciting advances since 2003 which should resonate with professionals working in many different countries and linguistic contexts. While the need for assessment materials that acknowledge and take into account all the languages used by the child has always been recognized, these articles take us beyond traditional approaches to assessment to include newer techniques such as non-word repetition and dynamic assessment. Linguistic skills that may be unique to bilingual populations are considered and celebrated, and the wider environment in which the child learns and communicates is also a focus, including situations (e.g. the Irish context) where funding authorities have not caught up with the specific needs of the bilingual population. This broader scope is to be welcomed. With a better basis on which to identify and assess the needs of bilingual children with SLCN, it should now be possible to explore management and intervention with these groups, and we would anticipate further special issues around this theme in years to come.