Should We Use Sentence- or Text-Level Tasks to Measure Oral Language Proficiency in Year-One Students following...

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Education

Background:

• Oral language proficiency is a key predictor of academic success.
• Assessing oral language in early years is critical for timely intervention.
• Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students may present unique language profiles.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare sentence-level versus text-level oral language tasks for assessing proficiency in young learners.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of these tasks in identifying students needing intervention.
• To examine task sensitivity in a population of low socioeconomic, linguistically diverse Australian primary school students.

Main Methods:

• 104 students from three low socioeconomic, linguistically diverse Australian primary schools participated.
• Students completed sentence-level (Renfrew Action Picture Test - RAPT) and text-level (Profile of Oral Narrative Ability) tasks at school entry and end of year.
• Performance was analyzed for specific linguistic markers including grammar, story length, and narrative quality.

Main Results:

• Both sentence and text-level tasks were sensitive to progress after tier 1 intervention.
• However, sentence-level task (RAPT) performance did not correlate with oral narrative concerns.
• Relying solely on the RAPT could miss 11-21% of students with oral narrative difficulties.

Conclusions:

• Oral language assessment for diverse learners should include both sentence and text-level measures.
• Oral narrative retell tasks are essential for a comprehensive evaluation of oral language proficiency.
• This approach ensures more accurate identification of students requiring additional support.