engleski

Sentence repetition task as a tool for bilingual assesment

Sentence repetition task (SRT) has a long tradition in language assessment. It has been used in various settings (clinical work, research) and with various target groups (typically developing children, specific language impairment, bilinguals...) (overview: Klem et al 2015 ; Chiat et al 2013). Previous research has suggested that unlike other language tests, SRT is less affected by socio- economic status (SES), and is therefore more independent of environmental factors (Seeff- Gabriel et al 2010). It is sometimes claimed that general memory skills are measured by SRT, but dominant view is that it reflects speaker’s expressive language knowledge (e.g. Devescovi and Caselli 2007). Therefore, when designing the task, morhosyntactic complexity is to be used as a main factor in developing task items. Sentences should be developed in such way that they do not differ (or only slightly differ) in number of words while their syntactic complexity differs. Bilingual speakers should be tested in both languages in order to measure language skills in two languages. To do so, tasks in both languages should be developed in parallel to target similar language knowledge and for the tests to be comparable. Italian and Croatian SR tasks have been developed in order to test Italian-Croatian bilingual children in Croatia. Similar or equivalent morphosyntactic categories were used with respect to language differences. Starting point for SR tasks in Croatian and Italian was SR task developed for English language (Marinis, 2010). Several categories were adapted or added because of the language differences. The test consists of three levels of difficulty in which sentences are matched for number of words. There are two to three morphosyntactic subgroups per each level. First level consists of several types of subject-verb-object structures, second level explores passive structures and clitics, and third level explores complex syntactic structures such as relative clauses and complement clauses. Klem, M., Melby-Lerva, M., Hagtvet, B., Halaas Lyster, S., Gustafsson, J., Hulme, C. (2015) Sentence repetition is a measure of children’s language skills rather than working memory limitations. Developmental Science 18:1, 146– 154. Chiat, S., Armon-Lotem, S., Marinis, T., Polišenská, Kamila, Roy, P., Seeff-Gabriel, B. (2013). The potential of sentence imitation tasks for assessment of language abilities in sequential bilingual. In: Mueller Gathercole, V. C. (Ed.). Bilinguals and assessment. Multilingual Matters. Devescovi A, Caselli MC. (2007) Sentence repetition as a measure of early grammatical development in Italian. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 42(2), 187-208. Seeff -Gabriel, B., Chiat, S., Dodd, B. (2010). Sentence imitation as a tool inidentifying expressive morphosyntactic difficulties in children with severe speech difficulties. International Journal of Language & CommunicationDisorders, 45, 691-702. Marinis, T. (2010). Sentence repetition task. Third meeting of a ISCH COST Action IS0804 Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment. Cyprus, October, 2010.

bilingual language assessment; sentence repetition task; acquisition of morphology; acquisition of syntax

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