Interpreting the “Sounds of Silence” in Dual Language Preschools in Qatar: Teacher's Use of Story Retelling and Language Sampling

Abstract

Abstract Analysis of English and Arabic story retelling in eight dual-language preschool classrooms in Qatar indicated that this method might provide useful data for monitoring children at risk for language delay. Language samples, elicited by teachers during five repeated story-retelling sessions, were obtained from a larger study of the vocabulary data of 157 children. Measures of language productivity included analysis of Total Utterances (TU) and number of Different Word Roots (DWR). Results revealed that 13% of the children who gave no response (NR) in English during the initial session were still non-productive 4 months later, at mid-year. Twenty-one percent of the children demonstrated English DWR more than 1 standard deviation below class means at mid-year and 17% remained below the mean at the end of the year. Review of concurrent Arabic language sampling at mid-year revealed that 7% of the children were non-productive in both languages and 13% achieved Arabic DWR levels that were more than 1 standard deviation below their class mean, with minimal change noted at the end of the year (12%), in spite of daily Arabic and English instruction. Recommendations are offered for SLP-supervised language sampling that facilitates dual language instruction in early childhood classrooms.