Abstract
Educational and (psycho-)linguistic research on L1 and L2 acquisition in bilingual children sketches them as a group of language learners varying in many aspects. However, most studies to date have based evaluations of language proficiency or new assessment tools on data from heritage children, while studies on the appropriateness of assessment tools for school-age refugee children remain a notable exception. This study focuses on the standardized assessment tool BUEGA for primary school children, which is, among others, a widespread tool for the assessment of pedagogical support or special needs (SN) in Germany. We compare the performance of 12 typically developing monolinguals (MoTD: 7;3–12;1), 14 heritage-bilinguals (BiTD: 7;1–13;4, L1 Turkish and Arabic), 12 refugee- students (BiTD: 8;7–13;1, L1 Arabic), and 7 children with developmental language disorders (DLD: 7;7–13;9) on the subtests of grammar, word-reading, and spelling. Overall results show that refugee-BiTDs perform in the (monolingual) pathology range. No significant differences emerged between students with DLD and typically developing (TD) refugee students. Considering the assessment of school-related language performance, bilingual refugees are at risk of misdiagnosis, along with the well-known effects of educational disadvantage. This particularly applies to children with low socioeconomic status (SES). Looking beyond oral language competencies and using test combinations can help exclude language disorders in school-age children with limited L2 proficiency.
Highlights
In Germany, the assessment of language skills plays an important role across all stages and sectors of education
In line with previous re10 of 25 search recommending the use of combinations of tools for the assessment of bilinguals (e.g., Chilla et al 2021; Tuller et al 2018), we explored whether combining subtests of the BUEGA with the German LITMUS-sentence-repetition task (SRT) and/or the LITMUS-QU-NWRT would enhance accuracy, the case ofinthe
Following the recommendations of Thordardottir (2015) for norm adjustments according to the participants’ language dominance, we found that only heritage-BiTDs slightly benefited from the procedure on measures of expressive grammar and reading accuracy, while no meaningful changes were observed for the lL2 group on either BUEGA measure
Summary
In Germany, the assessment of language skills plays an important role across all stages and sectors of education. Students are referred to a suitable school type by teachers after grade four, mainly based on their abilities in German and math (see Ahrenholz et al.2016). This transition is viewed as a critical event in each student’s educational path, since a referral to the Hauptschule or the Realschule rules out or at least complicates the possibility of obtaining a higher-level school leaving certificate, e.g., the general university entrance qualification usually obtained at the Gymnasium. Such an early allocation of students based on school performance is viewed with criticism by the research community since it contributes to strengthening the link between social background and educational outcomes in Germany (Ditton 2011)
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