Can children with DLD acquire a second language in a foreign-language classroom? Effects of age and cross-language relationships

Age of onset, motivation, and anxiety as predictors of grammar and vocabulary outcomes in English as a foreign language learners with developmental language disorder

INTRODUCTION

Like children with typical language development, their peers with developmental language disorder (DLD) are expected to learn English as a foreign language (EFL). For pupils without DLD, it is well-established that amount of informal exposure to English outside of the classroom, starting age of EFL instruction and motivation are strong positive predictors of EFL learning rate and/or achievement, whereas anxiety is negatively related to performance. This paper is the first attempt to investigate how these predictors of EFL performance operate in learners with DLD.

METHODS

Participants were nineteen Dutch-speaking 7th graders with DLD learning English as a school subject at a specialist education facility in the Netherlands. English receptive grammar and receptive vocabulary were measured twice, with a four-month interval. Foreign language learning motivation, anxiety and (length and amount of) informal exposure to and instruction in English were measured via questionnaires.

RESULTS

The participants did not show any progress on English vocabulary and grammar. At Time 1, vocabulary and grammar scores were positively related to starting age of EFL instruction and negatively related to anxiety. For vocabulary, achievement was also positively predicted by attitudes towards English lessons. Only the relationship between starting age of instruction and vocabulary outcomes was visible at Time 2. Amount and length of informal exposure to English did not predict performance, which is in stark contrast to the patterns observed in EFL learners with typical language development.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that children with DLD benefit from a later onset of foreign language lessons, whereas length and amount of out-of-school exposure to English are less important in the context of DLD, possibly due to difficulty with implicit learning.

Teaching foreign language grammar to primary-school children with developmental language disorder: A classroom-based intervention study

INTRODUCTION

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) start learning foreign languages, usually English as a foreign language (EFL), at an increasingly young age. However, current scholarship lacks crucial insights into how children with DLD respond to language learning in classroom settings and how they can be supported in doing so. The purpose of this early efficacy study is to determine whether a business-as-usual curriculum or a new teaching method tailored to the specific needs of pupils with DLD results in (greater) progress in the foreign language (English) and in the school language (Dutch).

METHOD

The participants were 75 pupils with DLD in the last three years of primary school, learning EFL in special education in the Netherlands. The intervention group (n=41) received 12 lessons following the CodeTaal approach, including metalinguistic instruction of grammar rules, explicit cross-linguistic contrasts and multimodal interaction with the material. The control group (n=34) received their regular English lessons. The study used a pre- to post-test design and compared the performance of the two groups on a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) in English and a narrative task in both English and Dutch.

RESULTS

Only the intervention group significantly improved in their ability to identify ungrammaticalities in English and generalised the learnt rules to new sentences. Although the performance on the GJT predicted accuracy of English narratives, neither group showed a significant decrease of error rates in English. In contrast, the accuracy of Dutch narratives showed improvement, but only in the intervention group. However, the effects were small and there was significant variability in responsiveness to the intervention.

CONCLUSION

We conclude that pupils with DLD are able to make progress in foreign language learning in a classroom setting if provided with adequate support.

Effects of early foreign language instruction and L1 transfer on vocabulary skills of EFL learners with DLD

Research on second language learning by children with DLD has mainly focused on naturalistic L2 acquisition with plenty of exposure. Very little is known about how children with DLD learn foreign languages in classroom settings with limited input. This study addresses this gap and targets English as a foreign language (EFL) learning by Russian-speaking children with DLD. We ask whether learners with DLD benefit from a later onset of EFL instruction because older children are more cognitively mature and have more developed L1 skills. The second aim of this study is to determine whether EFL learners with DLD benefit from positive L1 transfer in vocabulary learning. We administered a receptive vocabulary test to younger (Grade 6, n = 18) and older (Grade 10, n = 15) children with DLD matched on the amount of prior EFL instruction. The younger group started EFL instruction in Grade 2 and the older group in Grade 6. The performance of the two groups was compared after four and a half years of English lessons. Half of the words in the test were English-Russian cognates and half were noncognates. Contra to our hypothesis, the results showed no difference between younger and older children. Both groups equally benefitted from cognate vocabulary suggesting that positive cross-language transfer is available to children with DLD, irrespective of their age and onset of EFL instruction.

Systemic support for learners with developmental language disorders in Zimbabwe and South Africa

Background

Teachers play a significant role as early identifiers of learners with developmental language disorder (DLD). They provide important information to other professionals for further specialist support of such learners. Professionals, such as educational psychologists, speech–language therapists (SLTs) and learning support therapists are involved in assisting learners with DLD; hence, inter-professional collaboration (IPC) amongst these professionals is of paramount importance in meeting the needs of learners.

Objectives

This study aimed to examine systemic support strategies available to learners with DLD.

Method

This was a multiple case study of Zimbabwe and South Africa. Purposive sampling was used to select participants. The study consisted of 56 participants: 5 teachers, 2 SLTs, a learning support therapist, an educational psychologist and 47 learners. A qualitative research approach was employed and data were collected using interviews, focus group discussions and classroom observations. The data were analysed thematically and categorised.

Results

Support strategies employed by teachers include remedial lessons and promoting a culture of reading for leisure to enhance learners’ vocabulary and narrative skills. The SLTs and the learning support therapist use speech–language programmes and assistive technologies. Limited IPC and the absence of SLTs in District Based Support Teams were some of the challenges identified. The results also indicate that SLTs receive referrals mostly from primary schools compared with secondary schools.

Conclusion

Raising awareness of DLD in schools and communities is deemed essential. Inter-professional collaboration is recommended to support learners with DLD as it increases the exchange of ideas and mutual acknowledgement of expertise amongst professionals.