The development and pilot of a dynamic assessment of word-learning skills

Dynamic assessment (DA) has been identified as a potential approach for a valid assessment of bilingual children’s language abilities. However, it has not been widely adopted by speech-language pathologists for reasons such as perceived subjectivity in administration and scoring. Over the recent years, a number of structured DAs have been developed and shown to have the potential for the differentiation of language disorder and language difference. There has not yet been a DA that uses a scripted mediated learning experience approach in combination with a structured graduated prompting approach to assess bilingual children’s modifiability and therefore language learning potential. This chapter outlines the rationale for, development and piloting of a DA of word-learning skills with English-Mandarin bilingual preschool children in Singapore that utilises a mediated learning experience and a graduated prompting approach.