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Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons™
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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Communication Sciences and Disorders
Assessing Oral Language When Screening Multilingual Children For Learning Disabilities In Reading, J. Marc Goodrich, Lisa A. Fitton Ph.D., Jessica Chan, C. Jamie Davis
Assessing Oral Language When Screening Multilingual Children For Learning Disabilities In Reading, J. Marc Goodrich, Lisa A. Fitton Ph.D., Jessica Chan, C. Jamie Davis
Faculty Publications
Multilingual children represent a rapidly growing population of students in U.S. schools. However, identification of language and learning disabilities for students from different linguistic backgrounds is complex, leading to frequent misidentification of multilingual learners for special education. This article provides guidance on how special education teachers, speech-language pathologists, and other practitioners (e.g., school psychologists) can utilize each other’s expertise to accurately assess language and literacy skills of multilingual learners. Five key lessons learned from research on identification of language disorders are presented, along with discussion of why these are important when screening multilingual children for learning disabilities in reading. Specifically, …
The Development Of A Measure Of Orthographic Processing In The Arabic Language: A Psychometric Evaluation, Sana Tibi, Lisa Fitton, Autumn L. Mcilraith
The Development Of A Measure Of Orthographic Processing In The Arabic Language: A Psychometric Evaluation, Sana Tibi, Lisa Fitton, Autumn L. Mcilraith
Faculty Publications
Although Arabic is an official language in 27 countries, standardized measures to assess Arabic literacy are scarce. The purpose of this research was to examine the item functioning of an assessment of Arabic orthographic knowledge. Sixty novel items were piloted with 201 third grade Arabic-speaking students. Participants were asked to identify the correctly spelled word from a pair of two words. Although the assessment was designed to be unidimensional, competing models were tested to determine whether item performance was attributable to multidimensionality. No multidimensional structure fit the data significantly better than the unidimensional model. The 60 original items were evaluated …
If We Don’T Look, We Won’T See: Measuring Language Development To Inform Literacy Instruction, Suzanne M. Adlof, Tiffany P. Hogan
If We Don’T Look, We Won’T See: Measuring Language Development To Inform Literacy Instruction, Suzanne M. Adlof, Tiffany P. Hogan
Faculty Publications
Oral language abilities enable children to learn to read, and they predict future academic achievement and life outcomes. However, children with language impairment frequently go unidentified because schools do not systematically measure oral language development. Given that identification paves the way for treatment, schools should increase attention to oral language development, particularly within response to intervention (RTI) frameworks, which aim to prevent learning disabilities by identifying and intervening at early stages. Formal schooling should address language comprehension (in addition to word reading) to ensure an adequate foundation for future reading comprehension. In support, we overview the developmental relations between oral …
Comparing Methods For Assessing The English Grammatical Development Of Spanish-Speaking English Learners, Lisa A. Fitton Ph.D., Mary Claire Wofford, Kristina N. Bustamante, Natasha De Novi, Bibiana Nuñez, Carla L. Wood
Comparing Methods For Assessing The English Grammatical Development Of Spanish-Speaking English Learners, Lisa A. Fitton Ph.D., Mary Claire Wofford, Kristina N. Bustamante, Natasha De Novi, Bibiana Nuñez, Carla L. Wood
Faculty Publications
Identifying valid and informative approaches for assessing young English learners (ELs) is essential for school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The present paper focuses on two distinct approaches for assessing English grammatical development, a key component and indicator of language development for ELs. The approaches addressed are standardized normreferenced assessment and grammatical feature coding from story retell narratives. The authors review the utility of these approaches for evaluating the English grammatical development of Spanish-speaking ELs. A research example is provided to illustrate how a small sample (n = 18) of ELs performed on each of these English-based tasks. Findings reveal that children …