Diagnosing DLD Using Vietnamese Repetition Tasks
Diagnosing developmental language disorder (DLD) in children can be a challenge, and sentence repetition and nonword repetition are tools that can aid identification. While these tools have been well-researched in English, what about its accuracy and reliability in Vietnamese?
This study found that Vietnamese sentence repetition and nonword repetition tasks can be useful for identifying DLD in monolingual Vietnamese children aged 5. More specifically, the tools can accurately determine the likelihood that a child will have DLD based on the score they receive on the assessment.
Sentence repetition tasks measure grammatical knowledge using grammatical structures that are known to be difficult, such as passive structures and relative clauses. On the other hand, nonword repetition tasks assess speech sounds in short-term memory with nonwords and evaluate the repeated consonants, vowels, and tones in the syllables.
| Sentence Repetition | Nonword Repetition | |
|---|---|---|
| What does it measure? | Grammatical knowledge. | Speech sounds in short-term memory. |
| What does the child do? | Listen to an item and repeat it exactly as they heard it. | |
| Example Task Item | Cà chua ông trồng trong vườn chín rồi. | đép mống gờ |
Sentence Repetition Scoring
Following the task’s error scoring system, a monolingual Vietnamese child who scores below 89% is at approximately 3x more risk for DLD. This means that a child who earns at least 75 out 84 points can be considered typically developing (i.e., minimal or no risk for DLD) while a child who scores 74 or fewer points is at risk.
Nonword Repetition Scoring
Following the task’s syllable scoring system, a monolingual Vietnamese child who scores below 56% is at approximately 4x more risk for DLD. This means that a child should accurately repeat at least 28 out of the 50 syllables to be considered typically developing. Children who accurately repeat 27 or fewer syllables demonstrates risk for DLD.
Children who are at risk for DLD according to one or both tasks should receive additional testing to either confirm or rule out the possibility of DLD in monolingual Vietnamese children.
Next steps
The development of these tasks is a significant advancement for accurately diagnosing developmental language disorder in monolingual Vietnamese-speaking children using the cutoff scores discussed above. These cutoff scores should not be applied to bilingual children who speak Vietnamese as one of their languages.
The accuracy and cutoff scores for bilingual Vietnamese-English children in a wider age range is currently being determined. In the meantime, these tasks are better suited for progress monitoring and use with local norms among bilingual children who speak Vietnamese.
For more information
Access to Vietnamese Sentence Repetition and Vietnamese Nonword Repetition task materials, scoring instructions, and training videos are available at VietSLP. Registration is required, and it will provide access to many additional evidence-based assessment tools and resources. Registration and access are free of charge.
More information on the diagnostic accuracy and development of these tasks can be found in Pham and Ebert (2019). Contact Dr. Giang Pham (gpham@sdsu.edu) for access to the full article.
Reference
Pham, G., & Ebert, K. (2020). Diagnostic accuracy of sentence repetition and nonword repetition for developmental language disorder in Vietnamese. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(5), 1521–1536. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00366
The Bilingual Development in Context Lab is dedicated to investigating bilingual children who speak Vietnamese or Spanish at home.