Language assessment in multilingual children. A challenge for pediatric practice

In Germany the linguistic abilities and skills of children are assessed on a regular basis in pediatric examinations. Because of time limitations this examination is highly selective and does not always reflect the current state of language acquisition research. In the case of bilingual children to date almost no instruments are available which are capable of reliably differentiating typically developing second language learners of German from language impaired children. In this article the central problems in the assessment of young bilingual children are summarized and the test LiSe-DaZA (R) (linguistic assessment of language development for German as a second language) is introduced which measures children's development in core grammatical areas and which takes into account the age of first exposure and the duration of exposure to the target language. In addition, results are reported from a study examining how pediatricians deal with diagnostic challenges. It is argued that the diagnosis of language impairment in bilingual children requires a standardized assessment of central grammatical properties and that this can in principle be accomplished without testing the first language.