Assessment and treatment of vocabulary deficits in a multilingual child with SLI
Date Issued
May 30, 2018
Author(s)
Abstract
Background: There is not much research on assessing and treating vocabulary deficits in multilingual children
with SLI.
Aim/s: To report on (i) expressive vocabulary deficits in the three languages of a multilingual school-aged child
with specific language impairment (SLI); and (ii) whether cognates-words that share similar phonological
information and identical meaning across languages (e.g., camel/καμήλα/ камила) could be used as a
vocabulary learning strategy by exploiting the phonological information in the one language as a mechanism for
language (phonological) transfer to the other (untrained) languages.
Method: The participant (IS) had acquired Bulgarian (mother’s language) and Cypriot Greek (father’s language)
from birth and was exposed to English (immersion schooling) and Standard Modern Greek (classroom
instruction) on a daily basis for five years. She was assessed using an equivalent-based measure of expressive
vocabulary common to her three languages on three separate occasions for each language, 10 days apart and
later trained over a one-month period on 20 non-identical triple cognates that shared meaning and phonological
features in the proficient language only, English, using a picture-based naming task.
Results: Although comprehension of the target words in each language (Bulgarian, English, Greek) was normal,
the results revealed a marked naming deficit across languages. Cognate therapy was provided in English by the
school’s special education teacher after training.
IS received phonological intervention only using a cueing hierarchy technique. Cross-linguistic transfer effects
were evident during and after therapy, and were maintained one month post intervention. Generalisation to nontreatment words was evident especially for English during and post intervention.
Conclusion: Attention to cognates for multilingual children with developmental language impairment is a topic
ripe for further investigation.
with SLI.
Aim/s: To report on (i) expressive vocabulary deficits in the three languages of a multilingual school-aged child
with specific language impairment (SLI); and (ii) whether cognates-words that share similar phonological
information and identical meaning across languages (e.g., camel/καμήλα/ камила) could be used as a
vocabulary learning strategy by exploiting the phonological information in the one language as a mechanism for
language (phonological) transfer to the other (untrained) languages.
Method: The participant (IS) had acquired Bulgarian (mother’s language) and Cypriot Greek (father’s language)
from birth and was exposed to English (immersion schooling) and Standard Modern Greek (classroom
instruction) on a daily basis for five years. She was assessed using an equivalent-based measure of expressive
vocabulary common to her three languages on three separate occasions for each language, 10 days apart and
later trained over a one-month period on 20 non-identical triple cognates that shared meaning and phonological
features in the proficient language only, English, using a picture-based naming task.
Results: Although comprehension of the target words in each language (Bulgarian, English, Greek) was normal,
the results revealed a marked naming deficit across languages. Cognate therapy was provided in English by the
school’s special education teacher after training.
IS received phonological intervention only using a cueing hierarchy technique. Cross-linguistic transfer effects
were evident during and after therapy, and were maintained one month post intervention. Generalisation to nontreatment words was evident especially for English during and post intervention.
Conclusion: Attention to cognates for multilingual children with developmental language impairment is a topic
ripe for further investigation.