Design and Standardization of a Speech and Language Screening ...

Work thumb

Views: 795

Open Access

Copyright © 2018, Common Ground Research Networks, Some Rights Reserved, (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

View License

Abstract

This study investigated the psychometric properties of a speech and language screening tool “Profil de la langue, du langage et de la parole” (Speech and Language Profile) (PLLP-SLP) used with franco-dominant and anglo-dominant children aged forty-six to fifty-eight months who had entered the school system in kindergarten. All kindergarten students (1092 boys and 1080 girls) enrolled in a French-language school board in Northern Ontario in 2004, 2005, 2009, and 2010. They were assessed using the PLLP-SLP and formed the standardization sample for this norm-referenced language assessment tool. Reliable data is now available for this new speech and language screening tool to be used with French-English bilingual students entering kindergarten in a minority language setting. Scores for receptive and expressive language, as well as initial speech sounds and clinical judgment are available. An independent samples t-test revealed significant differences between groups on 4/10 subtests. In these instances, girls outperformed boys, though the difference was always slight (between .13 and .28), and anglophones outperformed francophones on one subtest, with the difference being less than .25. Speech-language pathologists working in minority language settings face particular challenges with respect to the absence of norms available for this population. Norms specific to language and gender should be observed when using this tool, as significant differences between girls’ and boys’ results, as well as between anglo-dominant and franco-dominant students living in a minority-language setting was observed.