01/09/25 Live Event – Bilingual Language Sample Analysis: Large-Scale Data & Clinical-Decision Making

Financial:
-Received honorarium from Bilinguistics for today’s presentation.
-Editor for Language, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
-Salaried Professor, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing, University of Kansas

Non-financial:
-Co-developed the capability of SALT to analyze language samples in Spanish.
-Ad-hoc reviewer for several publications.

Raúl Rojas, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is a Professor at University of Kansas where he directs the Bilingual Language Lab. He completed his BA at Grinnell College in Psychology and Latin American Studies, and his MA and PhD in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Temple University. He then completed a Callier Center Postdoctoral Fellowship at UT Dallas. His research focuses primarily on child language from a longitudinal and processing perspective, specifically dual language development in typically developing children and in children with language impairments. He is particularly interested in dual language growth, language sample analysis, and in validating paradigms to index linguistic processing and early language learning in bilingual children. His work has been supported internally via Faculty Research Initiative grants, and externally by anonymous donors and grants provided by a variety of foundations and federal agencies. Dr. Rojas, a nationally certified Speech-Language Pathologist, has provided bilingual (Spanish-English) speech-language pathology services in multiple settings, including schools and early intervention.

Children who are dual language learners (DLLs) are in the process of acquiring two languages, and their abundance continues to grow at a rapid pace in the United States, including nearly a third of children in Head Start programs, approximately a quarter of children in U.S. public schools, and the majority (>70%) being Spanish-English speakers (Hussar et al., 2020; U.S. Department of Education, 2018). The projected continued increase of DLLs in public schools along with an over-qualification of Spanish-English speakers in special education and tendency to rely primarily on standardized test scores to assess DLLs (Barragan et al., 2018; Iglesias et al., 2021; Kraemer & Fabiano-Smith, 2017) positions our clinical discipline at a cross-roads of needing to improve the accuracy of our clinical decision-making with DLLs by using converging evidence (Castilla Earls et al., 2020), of which bilingual language sample analysis (LSA) is a key contributor.

The purpose of this session is to detail the process of conducting database-referenced bilingual LSA with Spanish-English speaking DLLs for the purpose of increasing the precision of assessment as well as progress monitoring in therapy. LSA is a valid, developmentally sensitive, and potentially minimally-biased language analysis tool, particularly when juxtaposed with norm-referenced standardized language assessments (Castilla-Earls et al., 2020; Rojas & Iglesias, 2019). Further, LSA measures functional language production, can be culturally and academically relevant, can be administered repeatedly, effectively captures dual language growth, and can predict literacy skills in both languages (Heilmann et al., 2020; Orizaba et al., 2020; Rojas et al., 2019). In sum, LSA is uniquely well suited for documenting the functional language production of all children, including DLLs.

The session will facilitate a step-by-step demonstration and guide to database-referenced bilingual LSA, including important considerations and recommendations relative to elicitation of language samples, transcription, analysis options, interpretation, and clinical documentation. A series of case studies will illustrate the appropriate and inappropriate use of large-scale, reference databases, and contextualize a variety of clinical scenarios to assist with clinical decision-making in terms of assessment and progress monitoring for intervention.

Participants will be able to:
• Specify how to use language sample analysis as one aspect of converging evidence to properly assess the speech and language skills of dual language learners.
• Use large-scale reference databases to measure dual language production skills.
• Describe differences in dual language development profiles.

Time-Ordered Agenda
10 minutes: Introductions, disclosures, and general overview of service delivery with dual language learners (DLLs) and bilingual language sample analysis (LSA).
20 minutes: Elicitation, transcription, analysis, and interpretation.
20 minutes: Discussion of elicitation aids and software-assisted transcription tools.
40 minutes: Database-referenced bilingual LSA demonstration, followed by time for questions and answers.