Using a story-based dynamic assessment to identify Developmental Language Disorder in children learning English as an additional language

发展性语言障碍（DLD）可能对儿童的教育和社会进步产生重大影响。早期识别DLD对于确保儿童尽快有效地获得他们所需的额外语言支持至关重要。然而，在学习英语作为第二语言（EAL）的儿童中诊断DLD可能特别具有挑战性，因为他们的英语能力在测试时仍在发展，并且通常没有针对英语及其第一语言的标准化评估工具，也没有能够说这些第一语言的从业者。作为一种替代方案，拟议的研究侧重于发展的一个pretest-teach-posttest动态评估（DA），测试孩子的潜力，而不是专注于目前的能力，学习语言。这种方法较少受到先前语言经验所产生的测试成绩差异的偏见，并允许不了解儿童第一语言的从业人员评估儿童。本研究的目的是区分EAL儿童DLD从他们的典型发展的同龄人的基础上，他们的学习能力的“故事语法”，情感词汇和情感韵律使用的故事在英语。在教学过程中的可修改性，以及测试前和测试后的表现，将比较典型的发展中国家的儿童和那些被认为是在DLD的风险。这项研究的结果将直接关系到提供公平的服务，EAL发言人

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) can have a major impact on a child's educational and social progress. Early identification of DLD is essential to ensure that children receive the extra language support that they require as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, diagnosis of DLD in children learning English as an additional language (EAL) can be particularly challenging, as their English proficiency is still developing at the time of testing and there are often no assessment tools standardised for both English and their first languages, nor practitioners who can speak these first languages. As an alternative, the proposed study focuses on the development of a pretest-teach-posttest Dynamic Assessment (DA) that tests a child's potential to learn language rather than focusing on present ability. This approach is less biased by test performance differences arising from previous language experience and allows practitioners without knowledge of the child's first language to assess the child. The study aims to distinguish EAL children with DLD from their typically-developing peers based on their capacity to learn "story grammar", emotional vocabulary and affective prosody using stories in English. Modifiability during teaching, as well as pretest and posttest performance, will be compared for typically developing children and those thought to be at risk for DLD. The outcomes of this study will be of direct relevance to the provision of equitable services to EAL speakers