Magister Artium - MA / Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a global problem that affects various communities. FASD denotes a pattern of abnormalities intermittently seen in children born to women who consume huge quantities of alcohol during pregnancy (Church & Kaltenbach, 1997). Church and Kaltenbach (1997) suggest that FAS may be one of the primary causes of hearing, speech and other language problems in children. The two main approaches used to determine the effects of FASD on language are standardised language test (using a statistical approach to test some or all four domains of language, namely, phonology, syntax, morphology and semantics) applied to close-ended questionnaire answers and, to some extent, narrative analysis (in the course of which researchers use wordless picture books to analyse narratives in order to determine the social-communicative characteristics of individuals with FASD). Although the use of standardized measures of language might be helpful to determine problematic areas in relation to the different language domains (Wyper & Rasmussen, 2011), they do not show the difficulty with social-communicative functions which these children might be facing (Coggins, Friet, & Morgan, 1998). On the other hand, while narrative analysis addresses an important level of language (discourse level), it does not foreground the inherently interactive nature of language use and the problems that may be associated with communicative interactions. These shortcomings, in turn, suggest possible limitations in the interventions intended to address the language needs of children with FASD. There is, therefore, a need for complementary approaches that offer a more rounded picture of language impairment in children with FASD. In this study, three approaches are used in identifying features of the speech of children with FASD against the backdrop of comparisons with features in the speech of normally developing children. Firstly, conversational analysis (applied to spontaneous, open-ended speech) is introduced as a means to determine the more social-interactive aspects of speech impairment in children with FASD. Secondly, measures of linguistic aspects of speech (the mean length of utterance, Index of Productive Syntax and the number of different word roots) designed specifically for spontaneous speech are employed (they are applied to the same spontaneous data as the conversational analysis data). Thirdly, the more traditional standardized language test measures applied to non-spontaneous speech are used (covering the four domains of syntax, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics). The study’s objectives are to (1) compare patterns in the interactive speech of FASD children and normally developing children; (2) explore the relationship between FASD children and normally developing children in relation to both spontaneous speech measures and standardized measures of language; and (3) compare the impact of the primary caregiver's level of education on testing through spontaneous measures versus standardised measures. Using data from 14 children in the Bellville suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, the study finds that, on the conversational analysis measures, children with FASD, in contrast to normally developing children, tend to obey fewer rules of turn-taking, to overlap less, to engage less in self-repair and to struggle with management and maintenance of topics. The study also finds that children whose scores on the standardized language tests (with non-spontaneous data) suggest they have no language difficulty, especially in terms of phonology, obtained scores in measures of spontaneous speech that indicated language difficulty. The study also found that the socio-economic status of caregivers was a credible explanation for certain features in the speech of children with FASD is very similar to features in the speech of normally developing children. This finding highlights the role of family setting in mitigating the effects of FASD. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

Background: This study formed part of a larger longitudinal research study by Jordaan (2009), who tracked the development of language for academic purposes in grade 1- 3 English Additional Language (EAL) and English First Language (EFL) learners attending English only programmes in Gauteng over a period of three years. These learners attended schools in two different educational contexts where there is a marked heterogeneity in the linguistic backgrounds of both the learners and teachers investigated. Results from Jordaan’s (2009) study revealed that some EAL and EFL learners appeared to be slow in the development of their academic language abilities (as no progress was evident over the period of three years), relative to their peers, and thus these learners may have a language impairment. Purpose: This study investigated in detail, these “slow to learn” EAL and EFL learners in the foundation phase, in order to determine whether they have a language impairment and to determine how the language impairment manifests in these learners. Participants: Sixteen learners (5 EFL learners and 16 EAL learners) who demonstrated no improvement in their academic language abilities from grade one to grade two as determined by their performance on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation Criterion Referenced (DELV-CR) test were the participants of this study. Method: The participants were assessed on the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA) test, a Non Word Repetition test (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998), a Sentence Repetition test (Redmond, 2005) and the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT-4). Educators were also asked to rate these learners’ oral language, written language and reading comprehension abilities on a scale of 0- 5. The research design utilized was a non experimental, descriptive quantitative design, involving both correlational and comparative components. The data obtained was then analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to establish whether there was a relationship between the cognitive processing and the language proficiency measures as well as the teacher ratings in order to provide information regarding these tests as assessment tools for EAL learners as well as to further enhance the validity of this study. Independent sample t-tests were also conducted to determine whether there were any significant differences between the EFL and EAL learners’ performance in the two different educational contexts, so as to establish whether bilingual learners with language impairment are more severely impaired than monolingual learners with language impairment. Results: Based on the analysis of these learners’ performance on the DELV-CR test, results indicated that all sixteen participants presented with SLI and were not just “slow to learn”. The EAL-SLI learners in both contexts performed poorly on the reading comprehension test and were rated lower than their aged matched peers on the teacher rating scales. Furthermore, when comparing these EAL-SLI learners’ performance on the DELV-CR test to the performance of the EFL-SLI learners, the EAL-SLI learners as a group appeared to have performed more poorly than the EFL-SLI learners on all three subtests. As significant differences were found between the EAL and EFL learners’ performance on the DELV-CR test, the results suggested that bilingual learners with SLI, who acquire a second language sequentially, are more impaired than monolingual learners with SLI. The EAL-SLI learners also presented with visuo-spatial short term and working memory deficits and even though a large majority of the learners presented with verbal short term and working memory difficulties, not all the learners presented with cognitive processing difficulties. This finding has implications for the theories of SLI. However, the sentence repetition task was found to be a useful tool in differentiating between the “slow to learn” EAL learners and EAL-SLI learners and furthermore this test also positively correlated with various sections of the DELV-CR test which adds to the value of this test as an assessment tool in EAL learners. Positive correlations were also found between the teacher ratings of the EAL-SLI learners and the subtests of the DELV-CR test which indicates that teachers have the ability to correctly identify learners with language learning difficulties. Positive correlations were also found between the digit repetition subtest, the non word repetition test and the sentence repetition test which adds to the validity of this study. Conclusion: The results obtained from this study demonstrated that bilingual learners with SLI who acquire a second language sequentially are additionally disadvantaged compared to their EFL-SLI peers in the acquisition of certain aspects of academic language. Furthermore, although research has shown that cognitive processing measures are less biased in the assessment of linguistically diverse learners, results indicated that the DELV-CR test identified more accurately, learners with language impairment whereas the cognitive processing measures provided contradictory and biased results with the verbal working memory subtest over identifying learners “at risk” for language impairment. Finally, the use of sentence repetition tasks in the differentiation between “slow to learn” and language impaired EAL learners proves to be promising.

Bibliography / Thesis (MA (General Linguistics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.