You shouldn’t rely on your passport when you want to understand a child’s educational background and any language difficulties. Nor is it necessary to know if and to what extent he or she will have knowledge of other languages. In the process that is being conducted on the presence of foreign students in classes, with the aim of ensuring a valid knowledge of Italian, the skills of the experts of the Federation of Italian Speech Therapists (FLI) emerge, on the basis of a document entitled “The communicative-linguistic evaluation of the preschool bilingual child. A narrative review and theoretical-practical reflections”published in Clinical Developmental Psychology.
The text was created by a group of speech therapists and psychologists expert in the language development of bilingual or multilingual children and indicates how to distinguish difficulties due to reduced exposure to a language from those attributable to a true language disorder.
What emerges
The research therefore indicates the need to consider all the languages to which the child is exposed and four major areas of evaluation: contextual variables and linguistic history, phonetic-phonological skills, morphosyntactic skills and narrative skills. The time factor is also decisive: to reach adequate levels in some aspects of morphosyntax, at least three years of exposure to the language being evaluated may be necessary.
“From this point of view, linguistic skills in the mother tongue, therefore the language spoken at home, constitute a strong point for the development of language and future academic skills as they allow the child to develop basic skills linked to the ability to construct narratives and use complex linguistic structures within significant relationships. This is fundamental for good linguistic competence even in the second language”
specifies Ilaria Ceccarelli, speech therapist responsible for the Developmental Age Specialist Interest Group of the FLI and co-author of the study.
“Bilingualism, in fact, is not a pathology in itself, nor a risk condition and should not automatically be considered a problem. We must be able to recognize children who simply need the time and opportunities necessary to acquire Italian better and distinguish them from those in whom there is a real linguistic difficulty. Only in this way can we understand who needs an improvement in the Italian language and who instead needs to be assessed and, when necessary, taken care of by the speech therapist”
explains Tiziana Rossetto, president of the Italian Speech Therapists Federation.
Mistakes not to make and operational proposals
According to Anna Giulia De Cagno, vice president of the Italian Speech Therapists Federation and co-author of the study
“to intervene effectively we need to understand why a child has a linguistic difficulty, distinguishing those who are going through a normal process of acquiring Italian as a second language from those who instead present a real disorder and may need speech therapy. A weakness in Italian, alone, is not an indicator of a disorder: the child could have adequately developed skills in the language spoken in the family”.
In short: the distinction regardless of nationality.
“Bilingualism concerns a child who grows up in an African or Asian family exactly like one who uses English, French, German or any other language at home. What matters from a communicative-linguistic point of view is the child’s history: when he came into contact with each language, how much and how it is used, who speaks it with him, the quality of exposure and the skills developed in the different languages”
specifies De Cagno.
In summary, for experts, it is necessary to avoid two opposite errors: considering a normal phase of the acquisition of a second language as pathological or attributing to bilingualism a difficulty that instead hides a real language disorder. It is precisely on this point that the FLI offers its contribution to the institutions. If knowledge of Italian will become an important element in defining school interventions, it will be necessary to carefully establish what to evaluate, with which tools and with what objective.
Finally, the review highlights the need to develop increasingly reliable tools for the assessment of bilingual children and evidence-based rehabilitation interventions. The description of functional profiles of school learning is also fundamental, which could support inclusion in classes and individualized paths to guarantee inclusion and the right to study. The Federation’s next objective is to continue the work already started, focusing attention on the correct evaluation of linguistic and scholastic skills (writing, reading, numerical and calculation skills). In short: evaluating only Italian is not enough.
The FLI experts therefore remind us that we need to work for the school. It is not a question of denying the difficulties that may exist in classrooms, but of equipping the school with the tools to understand and deal with them correctly. Distinguishing those who are learning Italian from those with a real disorder means being able to give each child the answer they really need, also in light of the scientific knowledge that can support teaching methodologies capable of considering the specificity of these students.
