Speech assessment of Chinese–English bilingual children: Accent versus developmental level

Abstract

The study aimed to evaluate the phonological profiles of Chinese–English bilingual children in primary grades relative to those of English monolinguals, and to compare these profiles with speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs’) ratings of children's speech in terms of accent or developmental level. Participants were 29 Chinese–English bilinguals and 25 English-monolingual children. Speech samples were collected using the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation–2, either a Cantonese or Mandarin phonology test, and three sentences in a delayed repetition task. In addition, 10 SLPs rated each of the randomized sentences on either an accent or developmental level scale. Bilingual children with identified accents had significantly lower standard scores than monolingual children on the GFTA-2, but on the Chinese phonological assessments the same children showed age-expected speech. The differences in the bilingual children's scores on phonology tests in English vs Chinese highlight the need for phonological assessment in both languages. The SLP listener results further suggest that perceptual judgement may be a useful complement in phonological assessment of bilingual children but not a replacement for more formal testing.

Keywords::

• Accent
• phonological development
• bilingual children
• Chinese
• English

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a graduate scholarship to the first author from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We are grateful for the support of the school district principals, teachers, and the students who participated in the study. We also thank the speech-language pathologists for their enthusiasm, time, and co- operation, which made this study possible, and Daniel Bérubé for his assistance with the statistical analysis of the data.

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