The adolescent pragmatics screening scale: A comparison of language‐impaired students, bilingual/Hispanic students, and regular education students

Abstract

This study compares the pragmatic performance of adolescent students from three groups: language‐impaired students, bilingual/limited‐English‐proficient (LEP) students, and regular education students. A developed pragmatic screening scale (i.e., Adolescent Pragmatics Screening Scale) was used to measure pragmatic performance. The findings of this study indicate that the language‐impaired students had difficulty expressing themselves, establishing greetings, initiating and maintaining conversations, and listening to a speaker. These difficulties may place language‐impaired students at risk for failure to follow and complete classroom lessons and failure to participate in classroom discussions. Bilingual/Hispanic students had difficulties making requests of others and listening to a speaker. These difficulties may place the bilingual/Hispanic students at risk for failure in cooperative learning situations in the classroom. Implications of this study for the speech‐language pathologist and for future research are given.

Key Terms:

• Adolescent Pragmatics Screening Scale
• bilingual
• language‐impaired
• limited‐English‐proficient
• pragmatics
• speech‐language pathologist