Curriculum-Based Dynamic Assessment of Narratives for Bilingual Filipino Children

Area of Science:

• Speech-language pathology
• Bilingual language acquisition
• Child language disorders

Background:

• Accurate assessment of bilingual children's language abilities is crucial for speech-language pathologists to prevent misdiagnoses.
• Existing assessment tools may not adequately capture the nuances of language development in bilingual populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the accuracy of a novel curriculum-based dynamic assessment of narratives in differentiating bilingual children with language difficulties (LDs) from typically developing (TD) children.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of a test-teach-test narrative assessment in identifying language impairments in Filipino-English bilinguals.

Main Methods:

• A curriculum-based dynamic assessment of narrative skills was administered to 34 Filipino-English bilingual elementary school children (7 with LDs, 27 TD).
• The assessment employed a test-teach-test sequence, analyzing narrative task performance and a modifiability rating scale.
• Discriminant analyses, logistic regressions, and ROC curve analyses were used to determine classification accuracy.

Main Results:

• The modifiability rating scale achieved 97.1% accuracy in classifying children into LD and TD groups.
• Post-teaching narrative scores were more predictive of language group than initial scores.
• The Test of Narrative Language-Second Edition (TNL-2) Narrative Language Ability Index score reached 100% accuracy at posttest.

Conclusions:

• Curriculum-based dynamic assessment of narratives shows significant promise for distinguishing TD language from LD in bilingual children.
• This approach integrates curricular goals into narrative assessment, extending previous dynamic assessment research.
• Findings are relevant for the growing population of bilingual children in North America.