Some Guidelines for the Assessment of Oral Language Proficiency and Dominance

Abstract

According to the Survey of Languages Supplement to the July 1975 Current Population Survey, more than 7.6 million school age students in the United States live in households where languages other than English are spoken. Given these language environments, one's degree of bilingualism may theoretically range from a point approximating monolingualism to a state of balanced bilingualism. With such a range of possible degrees of bilingualism, there is a pressing need for some general guidelines on its measurement, especially in light of recent federal and state legislation requiring school districts to assess the language dominance and proficiency of their bilingual children in each of the languages. We therefore begin by defining four dimensions of bilingual measurement in a manner that is both theoretically sound and educationally useful. Next, we address three major topics in the assessment of language proficiency and language dominance: (1) selection of the language components to be assessed; (2) appropriateness of certain elicitation tasks used; and (3) general checkpoints that can be used to evaluate language proficiency dominance instruments. We hope this survey will bring into focus some of the important issues and questions facing those attempting to assess the linguistic proficiency and dominance of linguistic minority students enrolled in the United States public schools.