Child language assessment across different multilingual contexts: Insights and challenges from South and North

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss insights gathered from developing comparable language versions of child language assessment tools in different geographic, linguistic and sociocultural contexts. We use two tools as case studies: the LITMUS Crosslinguistic Lexical Tasks (CLT), which has been developed for more than 25 languages and assesses the comprehension and production of nouns and verbs, and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI), a parental questionnaire on infants’ and toddlers’ communicative gestures, words and early grammar. These two tools were both developed with monolingual populations, but the assumption is that comparable language versions can be used successfully with a multilingual child, providing indications of strengths and weaknesses in each of the child’s languages. Our work across very different populations has, however, indicated that the tools we have, however comparable they are meant to be, need to be used with care. The results obtained from child language assessment – even when employing standard practices, such as assessing all the child’s languages and using a comprehensive background questionnaire – need to be interpreted reflectively, especially in the absence of detailed information on local language socialisation practices. This is apparent from our (under-researched) African multilingual contexts but also in our more researched European contexts.