Toward a dialect-neutral Afrikaans-medium child language assessment instrument: Test item development

Abstract

This article reports on the initial phase of the development of an Afrikaans-medium language assessment instrument which can differentiate between typical language development and language disorder among child speakers of all dialects of Afrikaans in a valid and reliable manner, without interference from cultural and dialectal differences. The language assessment instrument being developed is a translation and adaptation of the American Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation developed by Seymour, Roeper and De Villiers (2005), which successfully distinguishes language disorder from mere language difference due to its focus on universal aspects of linguistic knowledge, which do not vary across dialects. The first Afrikaans version of the test was piloted on 64 typically developing speakers of Afrikaans between the ages of six and nine years, including speakers of both standard Afrikaans and so-called'Kaaps'. This first version did not successfully identify all participants as typically developing. Further adaptations have been made to the test, based on the results of the pilot study, leading to the second version of the test to be used in the next phase of data collection.

Keywords:

• Afrikaans
• child language
• dialect-neutral
• DELV
• language assessment
• test adaptation