Page 13 - Difference or Disorder Digital Version

INTRODUCTION

The increasing diversity in the United States has given a new role to educators and

speech‐language pathologists. Over the past decade, general education teachers have been

asked to collect data and track progress on speech and language development for students

about whom they have concerns, in order to determine whether or not to refer students for

evaluation. Many teachers have expressed uncertainty about how to differentiate speech

and language errors that result from native language influences and those that are indicative

of speech‐language impairment. This same challenge falls on speech‐language pathologists,

who make diagnostic decisions about students. Many native language influences mimic signs

of speech‐language impairment, making it impossible to use the same rules for bilingual

students that we use for monolingual students. Additionally, the patterns of language

influence change depending on the native language of the student, further complicating the

decision‐making process.

Difference or Disorder? provides educators with information about many different

languages. Having identified the most common home languages in the United States (U.S.

Census Bureau, 2009), the Bilinguistics team has explored the many linguistic differences of

these languages in relation to English. Languages covered by this text include Arabic, Czech,

Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, and

Vietnamese. There is also a section on African‐American English, which is a dialect of

American English.

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