title: Dynamic assessment of word learning skills: identifying language impairment in bilingual children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Bilingual children are often diagnosed with language impairment, although they may simply have fewer opportunities to learn English than English-speaking monolingual children. This study examined whether dynamic assessment (DA) of word learning skills is an effective method for identifying bilingual children with primary language impairment (PLI).
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifteen 4- and 5-year-old predominantly Spanish-speaking children with typical language development (TLD) and 13 with PLI each participated in a 30- to 40-min session of DA of word learning skills following a pretest-teach-posttest design.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results indicated that TLD children made associations between the phonological and semantic representations of the new words faster than children with PLI did, showing greater modifiability. Further, a combination of word learning in the receptive modality and the Learning Strategies Checklist (Lidz, 1991; Peña, 1993) provided the best accuracy in identifying PLI in these children.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Findings suggest that a brief DA is a promising method for accurately differentiating children with TLD from children with PLI.
authors: Arizona State University, Tempe, USA. mkapantz@asu.edu
authors: Maria
authors: M
authors: Kapantzoglou
authors: M Adelaida
authors: MA
authors: Restrepo
authors: Marilyn S
authors: MS
authors: Thompson
mesh_terms: D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D013068:Speech Production Measurement