Multilingual Assessment of Early Child Development : Analyses from Repeated Observations of Children in Kenya
In many low- and middle-income countries, young children learn a mother tongue or indigenous language at home before entering the formal education system where they will need to understand and speak a country's official language(s). Thus,...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/216321569590217665/Multilingual-Assessment-of-Early-Child-Development-Analyses-from-Repeated-Observations-of-Children-in-Kenya http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32487 |
| Summary: | In many low- and middle-income
countries, young children learn a mother tongue or
indigenous language at home before entering the formal
education system where they will need to understand and
speak a country's official language(s). Thus,
assessments of children before school age, conducted in a
nation's official language, may not fully reflect a
child's development, underscoring the importance of
test translation and adaptation. To examine differences in
vocabulary development by language of assessment, this study
adapted and validated instruments to measure developmental
outcomes, including expressive and receptive vocabulary.
This study assessed 505 children ages 2 to 6 in rural
communities in Western Kenya with comparable vocabulary
tests in three languages: Luo (the local language or mother
tongue), Swahili, and English (official languages) at two
time points, five to six weeks apart, between September 2015
and October 2016. Younger children responded to the
expressive vocabulary measure exclusively in Luo much more
frequently than did older children: 44–59 percent of those
ages 2 to 4, compared to 20–21 percent of those ages 5 to 6.
Baseline receptive vocabulary scores in Luo and Swahili were
strongly associated with receptive vocabulary in English at
follow-up, even after controlling for English vocabulary at
baseline: a multivariate regression of follow-up English
vocabulary on standardized measures of receptive vocabulary
in all three languages yields an estimate, for Luo, of β =
0.26, SE = 0.05, p < 0.001; and for Swahili, β = 0.10, SE
= 0.05, p = 0.032. The study also found that parental Luo
literacy at baseline was associated with child English
vocabulary at follow-up, while parental English literacy at
baseline was not: a multivariate regression on both
measures, along with household controls, yielded, for Luo, β
= 0.11, SE = 0.05, p = 0.045; the coefficient on English was
not statistically significantly distinguishable from zero
(p=0.18). The findings suggest that multilingual testing is
essential to understanding the developmental environment and
cognitive growth of multilingual children. |
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