Should We Use Sentence- or Text-Level Tasks to Measure Oral Language Proficiency in Year-One Students following Whole-Class Intervention?

Abstract

Aims: To compare students’ oral language proficiency on sentence- versus text-level tasks at school entry and following tier 1 intervention in their first year of formal schooling. Methods: 104 students participated in this study. Participants were part of a broader longitudinal study and were enrolled at 3 low socioeconomic, linguistically diverse Australian primary schools. Tasks were administered to all students at the beginning and end of the school year. Performance on the sentence-level task, the Renfrew Action Picture Test (RAPT), was analysed for information and grammar as per the test manual. Performance on the text-level task, the Profile of Oral Narrative Ability, was analysed for measures of story length, mean length of utterance, grammatical accuracy, number of different words, and story quality. Results: Results showed that both tasks are sensitive to measure progress following tier 1 intervention. However, RAPT concern status was not related to oral narrative concern status. Furthermore, if only the RAPT task had been used, between 11 and 21% of students performing below expectations in oral narrative would not have been identified. Conclusion: It is recommended that the assessment of oral language proficiency of students from culturally diverse, low socioeconomic backgrounds goes beyond the sentence level and includes an oral narrative retell task.

Inferential narrative comprehension ability of young school-age children on the autism spectrum

“…This task used the protocol described in Westerveld et al (2004) . This task has been used extensively in the past with young school-age children from New Zealand and Australia (e.g., Lennox et al, 2018 ; Westerveld et al, 2004 ), including preschool age children on the spectrum (Westerveld & Roberts, 2017). Children were asked to listen to a recording of the story “Ana Gets Lost” ( Swan, 1992 ), while looking at the pictures on a computer screen.…”

Standardized Measures Used Regularly by Speech-Language Pathologists when Assessing the Language Abilities of School-Aged Children: A Survey

“…These measures do not allow for language abilities to be observed in a natural social context, which is important for making accurate judgments on social abilities [14, 62]. Furthermore, both the CELF core and language index subtests and the RAPT of primarily consist of word- or sentence-level tasks which are not sufficient for assessing discourse abilities [63]. Using word- and sentence-level measures administered under test-taking conditions to make judgments about social abilities and discourse may lead to under-identification of language discourse difficulties in school-aged children [63].…”

“…Furthermore, both the CELF core and language index subtests and the RAPT of primarily consist of word- or sentence-level tasks which are not sufficient for assessing discourse abilities [63] . Using word- and sentence-level measures administered under test-taking conditions to make judgments about social abilities and discourse may lead to under-identification of language discourse difficulties in school-aged children [63] . To align with evidence-based practice recommendations, it is important that social abilities and discourse are assessed using text-level tasks such as language sampling [63] and/or data on performance in daily activities, for example, observations of a child’s interactions in the classroom, parent/teacher interviews, or questionnaires [64] .…”