Language Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Alcock, Katie; Alibhai, Nuala

doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-6834-9_8

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…To date, most studies of bilingual or multilingual child language development have been conducted in high-income countries (Barac, Bialystok, Castro, & Sanchez, 2014), although a few studies have been conducted in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Alcock, 2017;Alcock & Alibhai, 2013;Alcock, Holding, Mung'ala-Odera, & Newton, 2008;Cockcroft, 2016;Demuth, 2003;Potgieter & Southwood, 2016). Thus, limited data are available to help us understand young children's verbal development in LMIC contexts.…”

Section: Child Assessment In Multilingual Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilingual assessment of early child development: Analyses from repeated observations of children in Kenya

Knauer

Kariger

Jakiela

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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In many low‐ and middle‐income countries, young children learn a mother tongue or indigenous language at home before entering the formal education system where they will need to understand and speak a country's official language(s). Thus, assessments of children before school age, conducted in a nation's official language, may not fully reflect a child's development, underscoring the importance of test translation and adaptation. To examine differences in vocabulary development by language of assessment, we adapted and validated instruments to measure developmental outcomes, including expressive and receptive vocabulary. We assessed 505 2‐to‐6‐year‐old children in rural communities in Western Kenya with comparable vocabulary tests in three languages: Luo (the local language or mother tongue), Swahili, and English (official languages) at two time points, 5–6 weeks apart, between September 2015 and October 2016. Younger children responded to the expressive vocabulary measure exclusively in Luo (44%–59% of 2‐to‐4‐year‐olds) much more frequently than did older children (20%–21% of 5‐to‐6‐year‐olds). Baseline receptive vocabulary scores in Luo (β = 0.26, SE = 0.05, p < 0.001) and Swahili (β = 0.10, SE = 0.05, p = 0.032) were strongly associated with receptive vocabulary in English at follow‐up, even after controlling for English vocabulary at baseline. Parental Luo literacy at baseline (β = 0.11, SE = 0.05, p = 0.045) was associated with child English vocabulary at follow‐up, while parental English literacy at baseline was not. Our findings suggest that multilingual testing is essential to understanding the developmental environment and cognitive growth of multilingual children.

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Section: Child Assessment In Multilingual Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilingual assessment of early child development: Analyses from repeated observations of children in Kenya

Knauer

Kariger

Jakiela

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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“…According to a recent survey, the CDIs have been adapted into at least 68 languages of which the vast majority relate to languages spoken in industrialized communities [6]. Of the reported 68 adaptations, only 15 relate to languages spoken in nonindustrial countries, of which 7 are from languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa [7]. Moreover, while CDIs developed for industrialized communities are normed and used in various large-scale research projects, CDIs developed for nonindustrialized communities are often used in small-scale studies and therefore not normed [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, when long versions are not available and when the cost to develop a long version is too high (e.g., because only few people speak the language or part of the community is illiterate), it may be better to develop short forms from the start. This was done for Chichewa and Chiyao [18], which were adapted directly from the short versions developed for Kenya [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, rather than adapting a different CDI for each community, we decided to first construct one culturally broad adaptation for the Mozambican culture in Portuguese that could be used in both communities by translating the items from this adaptation into the specific languages spoken in these communities. Designing one conceptual adaptation for such similar communities and translating these into the specific languages spoken are an acceptable alternative, provided one bears in mind that such instruments could be very sensitive to linguistic or cultural differences [7,22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early Vocabulary Development in Rural and Urban Mozambique

Vogt

Mastin

Aussems

2015

Child Development Research

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This paper presents an adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (short version) into three languages spoken in Southern Mozambique. The tool was adapted to study vocabulary development among children of 12 to 25 months of age in two communities: a rural, monolingual Changana speaking community and an urban bilingual Ronga and Portuguese speaking community. We present a norming study carried out with the adaptation, as well as a validation study. The norming study revealed various predictors for reported expressive and receptive vocabulary size. These predictors include age, socioeconomic status, reported health problems, caregiving practices, and location. The validation of the CDI among a small sample in both communities shows positive correlations between the reported expressive vocabulary scores and children’s recorded word production. We conclude that the adapted CDI is useful for research purposes and could be used as a template for adaptations into other languages from similar cultures.

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“…Furthermore, the assessment should ideally capture the complexity of the child's language environment or the extent to which a child's language is specific to a certain context (i.e., school, home, or community) (Toppelberg & Collins, 2010;Pearson et al, 1993). To date, most studies of bilingual or multilingual child language development have been conducted in high-income countries (Barac, Bialystok, Castro, & Sanchez, 2014), although a few studies have been conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Cockcroft, 2016;Demuth, 2003;Alcock & Alibhai, 2013;Alcock, Holding, Mung'ala-Odera, & Newton, 2008;Alcock, 2017;Potgieter & Southwood, 2016). Thus, limited data are available to help us understand young children's verbal development in LMIC contexts.…”

Section: Child Assessment In Multilingual Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%