Using Dialect Discovery Worksheets to Learn About Children's Linguistic Strengths and Weaknesses

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• African American English (AAE) presents unique grammatical features, particularly in tense and agreement (T/A) forms.
• Assessing grammatical development in children requires tools sensitive to dialectal variations.
• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) can impact a child's ability to master complex grammatical structures.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the utility of dialect discovery worksheets in assessing T/A form productivity and context sensitivity in children speaking AAE.
• To differentiate grammatical strengths and weaknesses in children with typical development (TD) versus DLD using dialect-specific measures.

Main Methods:

• Utilized archival elicitation task data from four kindergartners speaking AAE (two TD, two DLD).
• Categorized and quantified T/A dialect-general overt forms, dialect-specific overt forms, and zero forms based on linguistic context.
• Analyzed form productivity and sensitivity to linguistic context.

Main Results:

• Children with TD demonstrated robust productivity and context-sensitive variation in T/A forms.
• Children with DLD exhibited limited form productivity and lacked variation in T/A form use across contexts.
• Worksheets successfully distinguished grammatical profiles between TD and DLD groups.

Conclusions:

• Dialect discovery worksheets are valuable tools for assessing children's grammar within their specific dialectal framework.
• These worksheets offer insights into grammatical strengths and weaknesses relevant for clinical practice and training.
• The findings support the use of dialect-aware assessment methods for children speaking AAE.