More language: science gets it right

If you recall reading this post from a couple months ago, I talked about language acquisition and transition from one language to another. Although Elena has been picking up English at a pretty rapid clip, we've still had general (as opposed to specific) concerns about her language acquisition.  In general, internationally adopted children are at high risk for delayed language devolopment, because of issues with transition to a second language, and, often, a dearth of positive language feedback in their early years in an orphanage. 

Although Elena seems to be doing very well in acquiring English, language delay can be subtle, and may even crop up unexpectedly when the child starts school and encounters the more formal, less contextual language of the classroom.  In addition, way back when we petitioned the judge for parental rights, we had promised that we would have Elena's language skills evaluated, and provide professional assistance if needed.

So we wanted to be proactive about language issues, and in any case a promise is a promise (especially to a Russian Judge), so we made an appointment with a speech-language pathologist.  I think the pathologist is used to dealing with profound speech and language delay, because her first questions were "does Elena use words?" and "does she use more than one word at a time?"

We explained Elena's background, and our general concerns, and the pathologist ran some tests to determine Elena's language ability.  The tests were designed for native English-speaking children, the pathologist explained, so we'd just have to see where she scored and adjust based where Elena might be lacking in her English vocabulary.

The testing was, I thought, very interesting.  It wasn't really about vocabulary and grammar, although a little of each is necessary.  It was about meaning and concepts and catagorization and inferences: using language to describe and understand the world around.  Questions were about ordering a sequence of events, or describing what an object was used for, or identifying similar objects, or describing how things are related spatially, or finding the sleeping black puppy in a picture.  Some questions tested Elena's ability to understand spoken words, and some her ability to articulate answers.

The test questions started with very early language concepts, things that children typically learn  first, and got progressively more advanced as the test went along. The methodology here, the pathologist explained, was to continue the test until the child gets six answers in a row incorrect; that would give an idea of where her language comprehension was topping out. 

The things Elena got wrong were interesting: one concept she missed was comparative and superlative words (bigger and biggest, smaller and smallest).  That's our fault: we literally never thought to introduce that concept to her, and she obviously had no idea what "bigger" meant.  We explained taller and shorter later at home and now she uses those words.  She also missed questions about letters and sounds. And she's still obviously more comfortable with the Russian language: one question was about a series of bird nests holding different numbers of eggs from zero to five; the questions was: where are there no eggs?  Elena very tentatively correctly identified the empty nest, but when I repeated the question in Russian, she confidently pointed to the right place.

At the beginning of the test, Elena was pretty engaged.  She likes answering questions and doing something new. And then, after a while...Elena clearly started getting bored.  The pathologist started skipping ahead to concentrate on specific topics without losing Elena's attention, and we took a few short breaks.  Eventually she finally missed the requisite number of questions in a row, and we quit.

The upshot is Elena's ability to understand language is about equivalent to a four- or four-and-a-half-year-old's, with her articulation skills about six months behind that.  Remember she's three-and-change, and has been learning English for only seven months, and this test was designed for English-speaking children.

I don't really want to turn this into a my-baby's-so-smart blog, because everyone thinks their baby is just the smartest thing ever, and saying the same thing again just isn't all that interesting.  But... objective test results, folks.  You can't argue with science. 

Most importantly, this gives us new information about Elena.  Our knowlegde of her medical history, and her life from the past 2.5 years is quite limited, so anything we can add is important.  So we now know general language concepts should not be an issue, and that we need to nurture this skill of hers-- which should be fun!