Guidance for CLD Preschoolers with a Potential Language
Impairment
1. Conversation Sampling and parent interview - Does student meet age
appropriate developmental milestones when looking at L1 and L2 combined?
(see attached chart)
*note – student can respond in any language with any level of code switching
without being penalized
a. If student clearly meets milestones (in L1 alone or by combining
languages), stop here.
b. If student can meet age markers in English according to Brown’s Stages
of Early Morphological Development, stop here.
2. Development – is student considered typically developing in other areas (social,
adaptive, motor, cognitive, etc.) either by a standardized measure (if possible) or
teacher and parent questionnaire?
3. Do parent (and teacher – if applicable) questionnaires indicate language difficulty
compared to similar peers** and siblings?
4. Language Evaluation/Peer Comparison
a. In native language – does conversation sampling and/or norm referenced
measures (if available) show that target child is discrepant from similar
peers
b. In English – do norm referenced measures *** show similar peers to have
higher English language development than target child?
c. Does target child show poor language development in both L1 and L2?
5. Language Learning Task –
a. Fictional Morpheme Assessment - teaching a groups of similar peers a
fictional morpheme with modeling only = does target fail to learn task or
score significantly lower than peers?
** Similar Peers – similar cultural background, similar age, similar exposure to English instruction, similar time in United States.
*** Norm referenced measures are used for peer comparison only. The scores derived cannot be used for identification of disabilities.
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