Abstract

 
 
 South Africa is a country marked by cultural and linguistic diversity with 11 official languages. The majority of school children do not receive their formal schooling in their home language. There is a need for language assessment tools in education and rehabilitation contexts to distinguish between children with language learning problems and/or SLI, and language delay as a result of limited exposure to the language of learning. The Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) provides clinicians and researchers with an appropriate and culturally relevant tool to assess bilingual children in both languages. So far MAIN has been widely used in Afrikaans- English bilingual children. However, translating and adapting MAIN to our other nine official languages to achieve functional and cultural equivalence is more challenging.
 
 
Highlights
1 Introduction This paper describes the use of Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings – Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN, hereafter MAIN; Gagarina et al, 2012, 2015, 2019) in South Africa by clinicians and researchers and the challenges to adapt MAIN for implementation in our culturally and linguistically diverse context
In acknowledgement of the importance of our cultural and linguistic diversity, the 11 main languages spoken in South Africa, namely isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi, Setswana, Sesotho, Xitsonga, siSwati, Tshivenda, ZAS Papers in Linguistics 64, 2020: 207 – 210
Following the procedures stipulated by the International Test Commission Guidelines (Bartram et al, 2018), research projects are underway to consult with cultural insiders in isiXhosa and Tshivenda populations to investigate the appropriateness and validity of MAIN in their contexts
Summary
This paper describes the use of Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings – Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN, hereafter MAIN; Gagarina et al, 2012, 2015, 2019) in South Africa by clinicians and researchers and the challenges to adapt MAIN for implementation in our culturally and linguistically diverse context
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