Unbiased Language Assessment: Contributions of Linguistic Theory

Abstract

This review addresses several situations of language learning to make concrete the issue of fairness-and justice-that arises in designing assessments. First, I discuss the implications of dialect variation in American English, asking how assessment has taken dialect into consideration. Second, I address the question of how to assess the distributed knowledge of bilingual or duallanguage learners. The evaluation of the language skills of children growing up in poverty asks whether the current focus on the quantity of caregiver input is misplaced. Third, I address a special case in which the young speakers of a minority language, Romani, are judged to be unfit for schooling because they fail tests in the state language. Finally, I examine the difficult issue of language assessments in countries with multiple official languages and few resources. In each of these areas, the involvement and expertise of linguists are essential for knowing how the grammar works and what might be important to assess.

The development of English as a heritage language: The role of chronological age and age of onset of bilingualism

“…It is understood that the lexicon is heavily influenced by exposure (Schmid & Köpke, 2008). Cultural differences may also influence naming (De Villiers, 2017). For instance, the subtest asks children to name a picture of a trophy.…”

Acquisition of Sign Languages

“…Shortly after children begin to combine two words, they enter a phase in which many different grammatical features emerge at the same time, which is sometimes called a grammar explosion. Between the ages of 3 and 5, preschool children acquiring spoken languages typically perform at or close to adult-like levels in many domains of grammar, including the use of syntactic movement operations (e.g., scrambling, wh-movement), the appropriate use of various types of null elements, licensing of anaphoric elements, and interpretation of quantifiers (see, e.g., Crain 2017, de Villiers 2017, Gleitman et al 2019, Lidz & Gagliardi 2015.…”