Assimilation and Language

U.S. Census Bureau (2018) data: 23% of children in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home.
Parents of dual language learners (DLLs) may recognize the value of learning English.
Communities may vary in their knowledge about the value of maintaining their native language and culture.
Cultural assimilation: Adopting all aspects of a new culture without regard for the benefit of the home culture.
Case: SLP working with a family to adjust expectations and priorities.

Objectives

Explain best practices for communicating results from speech-language testing to parents of DLL students.
Summarize the main advantages of bilingualism in cognitive and linguistic development.
Differentiate between cultural liaison, interpreter, and translator.

Case Scenario

Catherine is an SLP working with the early childhood team at a suburban school.
Referral for Fairuza, a 4-year-old girl who recently moved to the U.S. from Iran.
Fairuza's parents were both doctors in Iran; her mother, Dr. Ghasemi, is currently working as a doctor in the U.S.
The family speaks both Farsi (Persian) and English at home.
Fairuza completed early childhood screening as part of her intake into the new school.
She passed all areas of development, except communication.
Parents had communication concerns when they observed their daughter play with English-speaking children in their neighborhood.
Fairuza rarely initiated play, seemed to go along with whatever game they chose, and rarely protested when the children played something she did not like.
At home in Farsi, Fairuza was able to tell stories, ask for what she wanted, and protest when she was unhappy.
Parents requested a full communication evaluation because they were concerned that if she had difficulty with her communication, Fairuza would face challenges in her academic achievement.
The SLP met with the family and completed a full evaluation of Fairuza's language and articulation skills in Farsi and English, with the help of a Farsi interpreter.
After testing, the SLP concluded that Fairuza's communication skills were within normal limits, including her articulation skills, when tested in English and Farsi.
Fairuza's father shared that he pulled Fairuza out of a local preschool where they spoke Farsi only because he did not want her to become "confused" learning two languages and felt that she would be most successful if she advanced in English.
He insisted that she needed to improve her English skills and that the smaller ratios and specialized service in the special education classes, along with being among English speaking peers, would help her accomplish that.
Fairuza's language skills were within normal limits for her age and gender in her home language and within the low end of the normal range for English speakers.
SLP clarified that to be diagnosed with a language disorder, Fairuza would have needed to exhibit deficits in her home language and any other language she used.
Fairuza's parents were still concerned, they did not understand why their daughter failed the communication screening and appeared to lag behind in learning English but did not qualify for extra help.
SLP shared that Fairuza had age-appropriate skills in Farsi, and the things they noticed on the screener were likely common occurrences for students who were learning a second language.
SLP recommended and strongly encouraged Fairuza's father to reenroll her in her Farsi preschool because it would continue to strengthen both of her languages.
SLP explained the importance of continuing with Farsi for both language development and cultural benefits, Fairuza's father then asked the SLP more about language learning and bilingualism.

Commentary

DLLs frequently have different levels of mastery of both their native language and English.
The Ghasemi family wanted Fairuza to be fluent in English, which may stem from family preferences or perceptions regarding cultural assimilation.
The SLP maintained professionalism by sharing resources about bilingual language development and native language preservation with the family; the SLP could have explained earlier in the process, and in more detail, the differences between typical bilingual language development and characteristics of disordered language (Hoff & Core, 2015).
Bilingual advantages have been reported for executive function (Bialystok, Craik, Klein, & Viswanathan, 2004), metalinguistic awareness (Cummins, 1978), phonetic perception (Antoniou, Liang, Ettlinger, & Wong, 2015), cognitive flexibility (Adi-Japha, Berberich-Artzi, & Libnawi, 2010), creative thinking (Lee & Kim, 2011), and even delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia (Bialystok, Craik, & Freedman, 2007).
Some public school systems may have close to 30% of students who speak one or more of 155 languages other than English at home (New York City Department of Education, n.d.).
SLPs have a responsibility to provide valid assessments in languages in which they are not fluent; the use of interpreters is a reality that most SLPs will face at some point in their careers.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has provided a clear map to guide practitioners on how to select the best qualified interpreter, how to provide instructions on their role, and how to ensure that the person strives to extend their role from a strictly linguistic broker to being a cultural interpreter, ensuring that relevant aspects of the family's culture are interpreted and decoded for the clinician.
Multiple contributing factors, including lack of teacher training, administrative support in bilingual teaching, and a lack of a centralized methodology in bilingual teaching, impact the number of DLL students referred to special education services for assessment.
SLPs armed with knowledge about what is typical bilingual development and what is disordered bilingual development will be able to advocate for the use of classroom strategies that foster use of the native language as a strategy to facilitate language learning and to provide appropriate, equitable identification of students who truly need special education support.

Definitions

Cultural broker: person knowledgeable about the client's/patient's culture and/or speech-language community who passes cultural/community-related information between the client and the clinician in order to optimize services.
Linguistic broker: a person knowledgeable about the client's/patient's speech community or communication environment who can provide valuable information about language and sociolinguistic norms in the client's/patient's speech community and communication environment.
- An informant or broker can provide:
  - grammaticality judgments, indicating whether the client's/patient's language and phonetic production are consistent with the norms of that speech community or communication environment;
  - information on the language socialization patterns (i.e., use of language in socially appropriate ways based on the culture) of that speech community or communication environment; and
  - information on other areas of language, including semantics and pragmatics (ASHA, n.d.).