Abstract
A bilingual screening tool was developed in L1 Kannada and L2 English to provide teachers with an initial classification system in order to differentiate between language differences and disorders in English Language Learners. The study was conducted in Bangalore, India, and the sample consisted of 104 participants in grades 2–5 from low-cost, middle-cost and high-cost English-medium private schools. Teachers identified 33 persistent low achievers from the sample based on current English-only assessments. Contrasted to this generic classification, the bilingual screening tool was efficacious in classifying 15 students as dominant in L1 and delayed in L2; 4 students as dominant in L1 but not at risk of a disability; and 14 students as being at risk of a language learning disability.
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Notes
The tool was an adaptation of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals 5 Screening Test (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2013).
Kannada is part of the Dravidian language family, which is the second largest language family in India and accounts for 215 million speakers or 20 % of the population (Census of India, 2001). Although the Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu) are mostly spoken in the North India, the Dravidian languages (e.g., Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada) are mostly spoken in South India.
The term language learning disabilities was introduced by Stark and Wallach (1980), in their attempt to develop a conceptual framework for the term “learning disabilities” by drawing from the fields of reading, psychology and speech-language pathology. This approach was an effort to expand views on assessment and intervention and to stress the connections among language, learning and literacy. For the purposes of this study, the term language learning disabilities (LLD) is used to incorporate learning disabilities that manifest primarily as problems with oral language development. This in turn will serve as a precursor to measuring later reading success.
The term English Language Learners (ELLs) is utilized to refer to students who come from different home language backgrounds and are introduced to English as a second language and the primary language of instruction in school. For the purposes of this study, all students in the sample spoke Kannada at home and their schools followed an English immersion model. The students’ fluency rates in English varied from beginning and early intermediate to advanced depending on the level of English language support they had at home.
For the purposes of this study, low-cost schools refer to private schools where the annual tuition cost for each student is approximately Rs. 7200 ($120), middle-cost schools refer to private schools where the annual tuition cost for each student is approximately Rs. 40,000 ($667), and high-cost schools refer to private schools where the annual tuition cost for each student is approximately Rs. 1,50,000 ($2500).
While all schools in the study claimed to follow English immersion models, classroom observations (Shenoy, 2015) revealed that this was the case for the middle- and high-cost schools, but not for the low-cost schools where teachers spent at least 30 % of their instruction time in Kannada. Though the stress in India is on English-medium schools, the level of native language support increases in low-cost schools to accommodate the needs of their students, who come from dominant native language backgrounds.
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Shenoy, S. Efficacy of a Bilingual Screening Tool in L1 Kannada and L2 English to Differentiate Between Language Differences and Disorders in English Language Learners. Psychol Stud 61, 126–136 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-016-0369-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-016-0369-3