Expressive and Receptive Language Effects of African American English on a Sentence Imitation Task

Terry, J. Michael; Jackson, Sandra C.; Evangelou, Evangelos; Smith, Richard L.

doi:10.1097/tld.0b013e3181e04148

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Modified scoring approaches accommodate children's dialect differences by scoring nonmainstream responses as correct. The practice is endorsed by the American Speech- Language-Hearing Association (2003) because it helps close the gap between scores earned by mainstream and nonmainstream English speakers (Beyer & Hudson-Kam, 2011;Charity, Scarborough, & Griffin, 2004;Terry, Jackson, Evangelou, & Smith, 2010). However, scoring all nonmainstream responses as correct reduces the number of items and potentially entire categories of content (e.g., tense and agreement) that can be used to identify children with SLI.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Oetting

Berry

Gregory

et al. 2019

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose In African American English and Southern White English, we examined whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) overtly mark tense and agreement structures at lower percentages than typically developing (TD) controls, while also examining the effects of dialect, structure, and scoring approach. Method One hundred six kindergartners completed 4 dialect-informed probes targeting 8 tense and agreement structures. The 3 scoring approaches varied in the treatment of nonmainstream English forms and responses coded as Other (i.e., those not obligating the target structure). The unmodified approach counted as correct only mainstream overt forms out of all responses, the modified approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms and zero forms out of all responses, and the strategic approach counted as correct all mainstream and nonmainstream overt forms out of all responses except those coded as Other. Results With the probes combined and separated, the unmodified and strategic scoring approaches showed lower percentages of overt marking by the SLI groups than by the TD groups; this was not always the case for the modified scoring approach. With strategic scoring and dialect-specific cut scores, classification accuracy (SLI vs. TD) was highest for the 8 individual structures considered together, the past tense probe, and the past tense probe irregular items. Dialect and structure effects and dialect differences in classification accuracy also existed. Conclusions African American English– and Southern White English–speaking kindergartners with SLI overtly mark tense and agreement at lower percentages than same dialect–speaking TD controls. Strategic scoring of dialect-informed probes targeting tense and agreement should be pursued in research and clinical practice.

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confidence: 99%

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Oetting

Berry

Gregory

et al. 2019

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…Those researchers did not have a gold-standard measure against which to compare modified versus unmodified scoring approaches. J. M. Terry, Jackson, Evangelou, and Smith (2010) examined the influence of AAE features on the performance of preschool children with typical development on a sentence-repetition task. They found that the influence of AAE features was lower for the modified scores, but scoring modifications were not able to fully correct for potential test bias.…”

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confidence: 99%

Language Assessment With Children Who Speak Nonmainstream Dialects: Examining the Effects of Scoring Modifications in Norm-Referenced Assessment

Hendricks

Adlof

2017

LSHSS

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“…When all alterations to these structures were counted as errors, only 34% of the children recalled at least 75% of the items correctly. Last, J. M. Terry, Jackson, Evangelou, and Smith (2010) examined the effects of scoring modifications to allow for AAEappropriate responses on the sentence recall subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Third Edition (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1995). Although the scoring modifications were found to increase the 45 AAE-speaking children's totals, scores were still lower than expected on items that contained verbal -s marking (e.g., likes, lives, helps), a structure that is infrequent in AAE.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sentence Recall by Children With SLI Across Two Nonmainstream Dialects of English

Oetting

McDonald

Seidel

et al. 2016

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Expressive and Receptive Language Effects of African American English on a Sentence Imitation Task

Cited by 7 publications

References 3 publications

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring

Language Assessment With Children Who Speak Nonmainstream Dialects: Examining the Effects of Scoring Modifications in Norm-Referenced Assessment

Sentence Recall by Children With SLI Across Two Nonmainstream Dialects of English

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