A step towards differentiating language difference from disorder
Year: 2018

English learners (ELs) composed 10% of the American school age population in the 2014 2015 school year. However, only a small percentage of speech language pathologists (SLPs) report feeling well qualified to address the cultural and linguistic needs of ELs. This can be attributed to a number of factors, including inadequate clinical markers, a shortage of developmental data for ELs, and a lack of cultural consideration in standardized assessments. Due to these barriers, SLPs struggle to differentiate between language differences and language disorders and are at risk for over identifying or under identifying language impairment (LI) in ELs. Research suggests that a hallmark of LI is particular difficulty with verb usage in English. This study examined whether children who demonstrated difficulty on a standardized test of morphology also demonstrated less proficient use of grammatical morphemes in conversation. The results were then compared to their peers who did not demonstrate difficulty on a standardized test of morphology.  Examining Verb Usage in English Learners English learners (ELs) composed 10% of the American school age population in the 2014 2015 school year. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that the percentage of ELs is even higher for children under the age of 6 (U.S. Department of Education, 2016) Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicate that many of these children will need support in acquiring English language skills. For example, on the 2015 NAEP reading assessment, 68% of the EL fourth graders scored below the basic reading level, while only 27% of the monolingual fourth graders scored below that same level (The Nation's Report Card, 2015) Although many ELs struggle to acquire English language skills, there are different causes for this difficulty including language difference and language disorder. Some children simply have a language difference; "a rule governed language style that deviates in some way from the standard usage of the mainstream culture" (Paul Norbury, 2012, pp. 138) A language difference is caused by the cultural and linguistic variables from another language influencing the way children use English, including the sounds they produce and the grammatical structures they utilize. In contrast, other children have a language disorder; "a significant discrepancy in language skills relative to what would be expected..for a clients' age or developmental level" (Paul Norbury, 2012, pp. 138) ELs with a language disorder will have consistent errors throughout all the languages they use, which may negatively impact their reading and writing skills  Speech language pathologists (SLPs) help support ELs' various language needs. SLPs assess children's language skills to determine whether their difficulty learning language is related to a language difference or disorder. According to ASHA's scope of practice (2017b) clinically DIFFERENTIATING LANGUAGE DIFFERENCE FROM DISORDER 4 competent SLPs are required to have the skills and knowledge to differentiate a language difference from a language disorder.  2016) There are many challenges to accurately assessing the language skills of ELs, including inadequate clinical markers, a shortage of developmental data for ELs, and a lack of cultural consideration in standardized assessment (Bedore Pena, 2010; Paradis, Schneider, Duncan, 2013; De Lamo, White, Jin, 2011) When compared to their monolingual peers, typically developing (TD) ELs can show similar expressive and receptive delays as children with language impairment (LI) Because ELs' vocabulary, morphology, and syntax are still developing, their language abilities may be dispersed between the different languages. Thus, their language abilities in English may appear delayed or impaired, and testing with clinical markers in only English will not accurately capture their language skills (Bedore Pena, 2010) Therefore, several challenges arise when assessing ELs because there are very few bilingual SLPs and little data on typical and atypical development in languages other than English (Paradis, Schneider, Duncan, 2013) Many SLPs rely on standardized tests to assess ELs (Caesar Kohler, 2007) These tests, however, often do not include ELs in the normative sample, nor do they take cultural factors into account (De Lamo, White, Jin, 2011) For example, children from culturally diverse backgrounds may not have experience completing standardized tests. Due to the lack of appropriate standardized assessments available for ELs, SLPs risk both under identifying and over identifying these students as having LI (Munoz, White, HortonIkard, 2014) Under identification of ELs can occur when SLPs either delay or choose not to assess a disorder because they do not feel confident in the assessments available (Munoz et al.  FROM DISORDER 5 2014) When SLPs under identify ELs with LI (EL LI) students may not receive the appropriate services they need. These services may include therapy focused on reading, writing, and the development of language skills to better equip the child to succeed in academics and communication (ASHA, 2017c) In contrast, over identification occurs when SLPs label ELs as impaired when they are typically developing (EL TD) Over identifying ELs violates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which states that a child cannot be identified as having a disability based on a lack of English proficiency (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004, 2006) Both underand over identification violate ASHA's Code of Ethics, which requires SLPs to competently provide their services and to not discriminate based on culture, ethnicity, or dialect (ASHA, 2017d, para. 30 32) In response to these issues, recent research has examined new ways to accurately differentiate EL TD from EL LI. These methods include using a combination of dynamic assessments (DAs) language sampling, and other observations. DAs allow a professional to consider the child's environment, home, and culture (Paradis et al. 2013; Pieretti RoseberryMcKibbin, 2016; Rosa Lugo, Rivera, Rierson, 2010) While standardized assessments compare ELs' knowledge to norms that are culturally and linguistically biased, DAs allow SLPs to analyze ELs' learning processes. Because difficulty learning new information is an indicator of LI, this feature of DA allows an SLP to identify EL LI without being proficient in their native languages (Pena, Gillam, Bedore, 2014) The importance of this type of assessment can be seen in one study that found DA identified EL LI with 80.6% to 97.2% accuracy (Pena et al. 2014)  Spontaneous language sampling analysis (LSA) allows clinicians to examine how a client's speech and language skills are used functionally (ASHA, 2017a) LSA has proven to be an important measure for diagnosing ELs, as the accuracy of distinguishing between EL LI and EL TD is greatly improved when LSA is combined with standardized tests in a diagnostic session (Horton Ikard, 2010) For example, Jacobson and Walden (2013) found that calculating the number of word and morpheme omission errors from LSA proved to be an accurate predictor of language impairment across languages. Research suggests morphemes that mark tense and agreement (e.g. third person singular s, past tense ed) pose a particular challenge for monolinguals with LI (Leonard, 2014) Individuals with LI show a significant difference in their acquisition of grammatical knowledge and do not appear to understand that tense marking in main verbs is a requirement of the language (Rice, Wexler, Cleave, 1995) Therefore, experts in the field suggest that limited use of verb tenses is a clinical marker for LI in monolinguals (Rice Wexler, 1996; Leonard, 2014) Researchers have demonstrated that EL LI also have particular trouble with verbs (Blom Paradis, 2013; Gutierrez Clellen, Simon Cereijido, Wagner, 2008) Blom and Paradis (2013) found that EL LI demonstrated particular trouble with regular past tense markings on verbs in English, whereas EL TD achieved significantly higher accuracy in this area. Taken together with research showing verbs are also more difficult for monolingual speakers with LI, these results suggest that difficultly with using correct verb morphology is a hallmark of LI, regardless of the child's first language. The main goal of this project is to examine if ELs who demonstrate difficulty with a standardized test of morphology also demonstrate difficulty using grammatical markers in lessDIFFERENTIATING LANGUAGE DIFFERENCE FROM DISORDER 7 structured language tasks, such as a conversational language sample. The specific research question included: Do children who demonstrate difficulty on a standardized assessment of morphology also demonstrate difficulty on measures obtained from a conversational language sample?  This project compared the results of a standardized language assessment to conversational language samples collected in two of groups of ELs: one group who passed a standardized assessment of morphology (n 10) and one group who failed the standardized assessment of morphology (n 11) Data from this project was originally collected as part of a larger study examining spontaneous language sampling (Pavelko Owens, 2017)