Purpose:
The purpose of this review article is to conduct a critical analysis of state-level policies focusing on the provision of speech-language therapy and special education to children and youth who are racialized emergent bilinguals (REBs) suspected or labeled as dis/abled.
Method:
We analyzed the state-level policies focusing on speech-language therapy and/or special education of California, Kansas, Florida, and New York. We coded content in terms of labels used to describe REBs; the focus of states' policies, whether the policy mentioned the provision of bilingual services, and the orientation toward bilingualism. Thematic analyses and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the policies, and interrater reliability was calculated.
Results:
The results of this review revealed that most state-level policies contain English-centric, deficit-based labels to describe REBs and that most focus primarily on the classification and eligibility for dis/ability. Only one state addresses the provision of bilingual education for REBs labeled as dis/abled. The bulk of policies are underpinned by an ideology of “bilingualism as a difference,” meaning that the main idea of the policies is that emerging English skills does not result in a dis/ability.
Conclusions:
Policies do not exist in a vacuum and are influenced by sociopolitical ideologies. The findings of this review highlight the urgency of applying an intersectional, justice-focused approach to the policies and practices impacting REBs suspected and/or labeled as disabled in the fields of speech-language therapy and special education.
This paper demonstrates that a speaker's judgments of well-formedness for novel forms is based directly on their lexical knowledge by showing individual differences
Understanding speech in demanding environments is essential for daily communication. Previous research has shown that even highly proficient bilinguals may experience greater difficulty than monolinguals in understanding speech in noise. In the present study we further address this issue by examining the effects of varying task demand, fatigue, and practice on speech perception by bilinguals. One group of monolingual English listeners and three groups of Spanish–English bilinguals (bilingual since childhood, bilingual since teenager, and bilingual since adulthood) listened to nonsense syllables presented in noise and at increasing presentation rates. Listeners twice completed the two speech perception tasks on two days of testing. On one day the speech tasks were preceded by and on the other day followed by approximately 40 minutes of testing on nonspeech auditory tasks. Monolingual and bilingual listeners’ overall performance, their performance across the two days of testing (practice effect), and their performance across test orders (fatigue effect) will be compared. Preliminary results from two monolingual and two highly proficient bilinguals (bilingual since age 16 or earlier) show similar overall performance on both speech tasks and no effect of fatigue (test order), but suggest a greater practice effect for bilinguals’ perception of syllables in noise.
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