Bedore Lisa M, Peña Elizabeth D, Joyner Debbie, Macken Candace
Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Texas Education Agency, Austin, TX, USA.
Int J Biling Educ Biling. 2011 Sep;14(5):489-511. doi: 10.1080/13670050.2010.529102.
Educators of young children, including speech-language pathologists, are often uncertain as how to effectively work with children from diverse backgrounds because they do not know enough about cultural and linguistic diversity and its impact on language development. The current study helps to address this gap by examining the validity of parent and teacher report in determining language proficiency and language ability in prekindergarten and kindergarten age children from Spanish-English bilingual backgrounds. Parents and teachers rated child language proficiency and ability in Spanish and English. Results indicate that teachers and parents were reliable informants on English language proficiency, but only the parents reliably rated children's Spanish proficiency. Both teacher and parent report were significantly correlated to child language ability. Teachers' ratings of ability correlated with morphosyntax performance while parents' ratings correlated with their child's broad language performance. For clinical and educational decision making, we emphasize the importance of understanding bilingual children's language use across languages and contexts by incorporating both parent and teacher observations.
幼儿教育工作者，包括言语语言病理学家，常常不确定如何有效地与来自不同背景的儿童合作，因为他们对文化和语言多样性及其对语言发展的影响了解不足。当前的研究通过检验家长和教师报告在确定来自西班牙语 - 英语双语背景的学前班和幼儿园儿童的语言熟练度和语言能力方面的有效性，有助于填补这一空白。家长和教师对儿童在西班牙语和英语方面的语言熟练度和能力进行了评分。结果表明，教师和家长在英语语言熟练度方面是可靠的信息提供者，但只有家长能可靠地评定儿童的西班牙语熟练度。教师和家长的报告都与儿童语言能力显著相关。教师对能力的评分与形态句法表现相关，而家长的评分与孩子的整体语言表现相关。对于临床和教育决策，我们强调通过纳入家长和教师的观察结果来理解双语儿童在不同语言和情境中的语言使用的重要性。
