Identifying Language Disorders in Spanish‐speakers

Assessment of Bilingual Children for Identification of Language Impairment: Current Findings and Implications for Practice

“…In Spanish, these errors consist of clitic errors (Jacobson & Schwartz, 2002), omission of definite articles or gender agreement errors with articles (Restrepo & Gutierrez-Clellen, 2001) and overregularisation (hacio´for hizo) and person number errors (e.g. cayo´for cayeron) with verbs (Ambert, 1986). These findings are comparable to what Bosch and Serra (1997) found for school-age monolingual Spanish speaking children with LI.…”

“…This child had expressive and receptive delays in both languages. In the semantic domain, Ambert's (1986) school-aged participants' word use errors suggested poor representation of word meaning and possible word finding difficulties. Some examples included word substitutions (e.g.…”

Assessing Morphosyntax in Spanish-Speaking Children

“…For example, schoolaged children continue to have difficulties producing articles and, to a lesser extent, clitic pronouns in spontaneous language. 19,20 Restrepo and Gutierrez-Clellen 21 analyzed the nature of article production errors and indicated that the most frequent error types were omissions and gender substitutions.…”

“…School-aged children have sometimes been reported to have difficulties with these structures in spontaneous speech, such as lack of subjectverb agreement. 19,20,22 It does not appear that errors of this type are as frequent as nounphrase related errors. An area that requires additional attention is the use of later acquired verbal inflections that are used in the context of complex syntax.…”

The Effects of Cultural and Linguistic Variables On the Academic Achievement of Minority Children

“…The situation is improving somewhat, though. For example, recent research has been conducted in identification of · language disorders in Spanish-speakers (Ambert, 1986); techniques for minimizing inappropriate referrals of language minority students to special education (Ortiz & Maldonado-Colon, 1986); methods of assessment and data interpretation of linguistically and culturally different students referred for disabilities or disorders (MaldonadoCol6n, 1986) and assessment of reading problems (Viera, 1986).…”