MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. A Possible Means of Lexical Longitudinal Assessment of Very Young EFL learners
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69475/Keywords:
progress reports, longitudinal tests, standardized tests, young EFL learners, lexical reception, lexical production, MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development InventoriesAbstract
Progress reports are one of the documents beginner Romanian teachers of English need to have included in their portfolios. Unfortunately, measuring progress is not as easy as it looks at first glance, as teachers need a testing tool that can be used longitudinally. Standard tests are easy to use and they have proved quite reliable with older students. Things become more complicated with young learners as the EFL standard tests targeting this age group are less complete and complex. Furthermore, they have hardly been scientifically tested. Under these circumstances, the aim of the present study was to make use of The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs), a standardized and widely researched first language testing tool, in order to assess children’s lexical progress in English as a FL. Accordingly, the receptive and productive vocabularies of a group of 51 young learners acquiring English as a FL in a formal immersion setting were measured across time by means of this tool. Afterwards and by means of the same test, the results were compared against those obtained by a control group made of 15 young learners of similar ages but who were learning English in a regular school setting with less hours of exposure per week. These outcomes were contrasted against those of other studies conducted with the same test, leading us to conclude that indeed the MB-CDIs could yield reliable longitudinal results with young EFL learners and hence could be used when writing the class or students’ progress reports.
References
Bishop, D. V. M. (2003). Test for reception of grammar TRGO2, Pearson Assessment.
Bergstörm, K., Klatte, M., & Steinbrink, C. (2016). Effects of language immersion in kindergarten. Language Learning, 66(2), 386-418.
Byers, H.K. & Wreker, J. F. (2011). Bilingualism in infancy: first steps in perception and comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12(4), 144.151.
Galeote, M., Soto, P., Serrano, A., Pulido, L., Rey, R., & Martinez-Roa, P. (2006). Un nuevo instrumento para evaluar el desarrollo comunicativo y lingüístico de niños con síndrome de Down. Revista Síndrome de Down, 23, 20-26.
Heilmann, J., Ellis W. S., Evans, J., & Hollar, C. (2005). Utility of the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory in identifying language abilities of late-talking and typically developing toddlers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 14(1), 40-51.
Luyster, R., Qiu. S., Lopez, K., & Lord, C. (2007). Predicting outcomes of children referred for autism using the MacArthur-Bates communicative development inventory. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 50(3), 667-681.
Nicoladis, E., & Secco, G. (2000). The role of a child’s productive vocabulary in the language choice of a bilingual family. First Language, 58, 3-28.
Mancilla-Martinez, J., Alexander-Pan, B., & Banu, V. S. (2010). Assessing the productive vocabulary of Spanish – English bilingual toddlers from low income families. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32(2), 333-357.
Mariscal Altares, S., Nieva, S., & Lopez-Ornat, S. (2010). Observar y medir el desarrollo gramatical temprano en español. Psicothema, 22(1), 51-56.
Mayor, J., & Plunkett, K. (2010). A statistical estimate of infant total vocabulary size from CDI analysis. Developmental Science, 14(3), 1-17.
Pallant, J. (2005). SPSS Survival Manual. A step by step guide to data analyzing using SPSS for Windows (Version 12). Sydney: Allen& Unwin.
Pearson, B. Z., & Fernandez, S. (1994). Patterns of interaction in the lexical growth in two languages of bilingual infants and toddlers. Language Learning, 44(4), 617-653.
Pearson, B. Z., Fernandez, S., & Oller, D.K. (1993). Lexical development in bilingual infants and toddlers: comparison to monolingual norms. Language Learning, 43, 93-120.
Pearson, B. Z., Fernandez, S., Lewedeg, V., & Oller, D. (1997). The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18(1), 41-58
Poulin-Dubois, D., & Goodz, N. (2001). Language differentiation in bilingual infants: Evidence from babbling. In J. Cenoz & F. Genesee (Eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition (pp. 95-106). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Poulin-Dubois, D., Bialystok, E., Blaye, A., Polonia, A., & Yott, J. (2013). Lexical access and vocabulary development in very young bilinguals. The International Journal of Bilingualism: Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Linguistic Studies of Language Behaviour, 17(1), 57–70.
Quay, S. (2001). Managing linguistic boundaries in early trilingual development. In J. Cenoz & F. Genesee (Eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition (pp. 149-200). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Serrat, E., Sanz-Torrent, M., Badia, I., Aguilar, E., Olmo, R., Lara, F., Llorenc, A., & Serra, M. (2010). La relación entre el aprendizaje léxico y el desarrollo gramatical. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 33(4), 435-448.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Cristina Alexandrescu (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
