Assessing EAL Children’s Oral Language: A Survey of Professional Practices in the UK

Purpose: Children with English as an Additional Language (EAL) represent approximately one in five children in English primary schools (Department for Education, 2020). EAL pupils are at risk of underperforming academically unless their English proficiency is comparable to monolingual peers. Thus, EAL children with low English proficiency require appropriate assessment to distinguish difficulties due to underlying language impairments from those due to lack of English exposure. While the latter could be overcome at school without targeted interventions, those with an undiagnosed impairment require early identification and appropriate support. However, no standardised language assessment for EAL pupils and pre-schoolers exists in the UK. We aimed to obtain an accurate picture of current UK practices of assessment of EAL children’s oral language skills, to inform both further research and educational policy regarding provision for this growing population. We investigated which methods of language assessment are used by a range of UK practitioners working with EAL children, including speech and language pathologists, teachers and health workers. We additionally asked about practitioners’ attitudes regarding the availability and adequacy of existing means of oral language assessment for EAL children. We also sought information regarding assessment practices with monolingual children, as a benchmark to evaluate assessments of EAL children.Methods: A 71-item questionnaire, including open questions, multiple-choice questions and Likert scales, was administered between June 2017 and October 2018. Questions concerned the assessment tools practitioners used (primarily for language, but also regarding other aspects of behaviour and cognition), their opinions of those tools, satisfaction levels regarding EAL children’s assessment and barriers to satisfactory assessment. In total, 140 practitioners working with children speaking 63 different languages gave comprehensive questionnaire responses. This paper focuses on responses to the 36 oral-language-related questions.Results: A majority of practitioners do not have confidence in the tools currently available to assess the language needs of bilingual children. As no appropriate standard assessments exist in the UK, many practitioners rely on informal measures, such as parental reports, observations and information gleaned from other practitioners. Assessments standardised for monolingual children are less frequently used, but when they are, the most popular are oral language assessments such as the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2003) and the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (Dunn, Dunn, & Styles, 2009). Additionally, assessment of bilinguals is often carried out with the aid of interpreters, who are typically untrained in the requirements of speech and language therapy; indeed, practitioners report dissatisfaction with availability of appropriately trained interpreters. The most common suggestion for overcoming barriers to assessment of EAL children was greater availability of standardised tests in the appropriate languages.Conclusions: The predominant use of informal measures and assessments standardised on monolingual children can lead to UK children with EAL being over- or under-diagnosed with language impairments. Recommendations for future research, training and best practice are discussed.