Specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual Malaysian children is grossly
underidentified for two reasons. First, there is an absence of locally-developed
norm-referenced language assessment tools. The challenge in developing a local
assessment tool comes from the inadequate knowledge of children’s English as it
develops in the bilingual environment. Second, the characteristics of Malaysian
English, a non-Standard form of English, are often confused with the features of SLI
in monolingual children learning Standard English. To date, the literature has no
information on SLI in bilingual children learning a non-Standard English because
research mainly focuses on bilingual Standard English and monolingual
non-Standard English.
Spontaneous language sample is the recommended language assessment tool for
bilingual Malaysian children because it provides quantitative and qualitative
information for language development and assessment in communities with complex
language environment. Phase 1 of the current study investigated the developmental
sensitivity of four language sample measures (LSMs), including mean length of
utterances (MLU), lexical diversity (D), the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn), and
frequency of code-switching (FCS), by examining the relationship between these
LSMs and age in 52 bilingual Chinese-English Malaysian children with normal
language development (NLD), aged between 3;06 and 6;09. Analyses showed a
highly significant linear relationship with age in D (r=.536) and IPSyn (r=.451),
moderately significant linear relationship with MLU (r=.364), but not in FCS. The
findings suggested that MLU, D, and IPSyn were developmentally sensitive to
non-Standard English in the bilingual Malaysian children studied.
Phase 2 compared the same measures obtained from nine children with SLI and
their age-matched controls from the NLD group in Phase 1. The SLI group had
significantly lower MLU and the IPSyn scores than the NLD group. Discriminant
function analysis indicated that the IPSyn alone classified children into SLI and NLD
groups at 77.8% classification accuracy. The four misclassified children, two in the
SLI and two in the NLD group, were aged below 4;06 years. MLU and the IPSyn
showed potential as SLI markers for bilingual Malaysian children. Two types of
error patterns were observed from the SLI group. The first pattern included verb
and the copula -be omissions which were also observed in younger children from the
NLD group. The second pattern was omission of prepositions which was not
observed in younger NLD group, reflected linguistic transfer from the first language.
Future research in this area is suggested to a) extend the age range of the
study to include older children to further verify the diagnostic potential of LSMs, b)
consider longitudinal research design so that language development over time can be
described and c) include non-linguistic measures given reports of these measures as
potential markers of SLI. As an initial study on bilingual children learning
non-Standard English, the current study provided empirical data for charting
language development and also suggested potential markers for SLI. The study can
serve as the basic framework not only for further research on other bilingual
non-Standard English-speaking groups but also for children with language
impairment secondary to developmental disorders in the same language group. / published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Philosophy
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/146791 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Ooi, Chia Wen., 黃家雯. |
| Contributors | Wong, AMY |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Source | http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B4730909X |
| Rights | The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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