Dialectal grammatical differences in oral narratives of school-aged Indigenous Australian children

Abstract

Purpose: Children's oral language samples are regularly analysed in order to describe levels of language development and develop learning goals. However, diagnostic interpretation of language samples from Indigenous Australian children is problematic due to overlap between features of Aboriginal English and features of language impairment in the mainstream non-Indigenous population. Limited studies explore the use of Aboriginal English and its diagnostic impact. This research, therefore, describes the grammatical features of language samples from one group of Indigenous Australian children.

Method: Participants were 19 children aged 8;1–13;4 from the same school in a regional city with 100% Indigenous enrolment. The Test of Narrative Language was administered, eliciting three oral narratives, and features of Aboriginal English grammar were coded.

Result: Dialect density was highly variable and greater in the Verb Phrase than in the Noun Phrase or Clause Structure. High teacher ratings of oral language ability aligned with lower measures of dialect density and higher grammatical accuracy for Standard Australian English. Grammatical accuracy was frequently higher for Aboriginal English than Standard Australian English.

Conclusion: Over-identification of language impairment was identified as a risk when evaluating the language ability of Indigenous Australian children.

Keywords::

• Assessment
• school-age children
• language

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by an Early Career Researchers Grant from James Cook University (awarded to the first author), and by the support provided by the Townsville school which facilitated consent from families and assessment of children during school hours. Thank you also to the speech pathology students from James Cook University who completed the assessments.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Supplementary material available online

Supplementary Appendix to be found online at http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/17549507.2014.979878.