The purpose of this study was to examine the clinical utility of three language sample analyses when working with low-income, African American (AA) children. Eighteen normally developing and three at-risk AA three-year-old preschoolers participated in the study. Language samples were elicited from each child during a 15-20 minute play interaction. Three language sample analyses, contrastive analysis, average sentence length, and complex syntax use, were completed on each language sample. Also coded was each childs use of nonmainstream African American English (AAE) patterns.
Only the contrastive analysis generated reliable differences between the at-risk children and the normally developing children. Other group differences that were observed in the data included the amount of talking each child produced and their rate of nonmainstream pattern use. Specifically, the at-risk children produced higher rates of nonmainstream dialect patterns when dialect rate was calculated by dividing the total number of dialect forms by the total number of words spoken. The at-risk children also talked less, but produced higher rates of nonmainstream dialect patterns than did their normal peers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-0410103-172007 |
| Date | 14 April 2003 |
| Creators | Wynn, Christy Gayle |
| Contributors | Janet Norris, Paul Hoffman, Janna Oetting |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-0410103-172007/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University Libraries in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. |
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