Written Narratives from French and English Speaking Children with Language Impairment

Transcription

1 PRE-PRINT Reilly, J., Bernicot, J., Olive, T., Uzé, J., Wulfeck, B., Favart, M. & Appelbaum, M. (2012, accepté). Written Narratives from French and English Speaking Children with Language Impairment. In B. Arfé, V & J. Dockrell & V. Berninger (Eds). Handbook of writing development and instruction in children with language difficulties. Oxford: University Press. Written Narratives from French and English Speaking Children with Language Impairment Judy S. Reilly San Diego State University and Université de Poitiers-CNRS Josie Bernicot Université de Poitiers-CNRS Thierry Olive Université de Poitiers-CNRS Joël Uzé CRTL-Centre Hospitalier H. Laborit, Poitiers Beverly Wulfeck San Diego State University Monik Favart Université de Poitiers-CNRS Mark Appelbaum University of California, San Diego To appear in Handbook of writing development and instruction in children with language difficulties, B. Arfé, V & J. Dockrell & V. Berninger, Eds. Oxford University Press. Correspondence concerning the chapter should be addressed to: Judy Reilly Department of Psychology, San Diego State University 6330 Alvarado Court, #208 San Diego, California USA 1

2 Introduction Most typically developing children are good speakers of their native language by about five years of age and, as they enter school, they begin to acquire its graphic representation - writing. However, children with Language Impairment (LI) experience problems in acquiring both spoken and written language and studies that have considered the written language of children with LI have found these problems to be persistent. But these studies have been limited to children acquiring English as their first language. To better understand both the process of writing development and the nature of Language Impairment, this chapter investigates the written language of children with LI and typically developing children acquiring either French or American English as their native language. To contextualize our writing study, we first present a brief overview of language impairment and a short comparison of French and English grammar and their writing systems. Children with Language Impairment are typically developing children with no known neurological, emotional, or hearing problems and yet they demonstrate significant difficulties in acquiring their native language. The majority of children who receive a diagnosis of Language Impairment as they enter primary school have a documented history of initial delay in the onset of language and persistent problems in expressive language through the school years, notably with grammatical morphology (e.g. Fey, Catts, Proctor- Williams, Tomblin, & Zhang (2004), Leonard (1998), and Rice, Wexler, & Cleave(1995)). In addition, some children with LI also exhibit concomitant problems in receptive language 2

3 (Leonard, 1998). While a subset of children with LI appear to catch up in their spoken language abilities (e.g., Bishop & Edmonson, 1987), many continue to show subtle deficits in spoken language with more severe problems in written language (Bishop & Clarkson (2003), Dockrell, Lindsay, Connelly, & Mackie (2007), Gillam & Johnston (1992), and Scott & Windsor (2000)). As noted above, the vast majority of such studies, especially on writing, have been conducted with children and adolescents acquiring English. In this chapter we compare the written language of children and adolescents with LI who are acquiring French as their first language with those learning English to investigate: 1) what is common across the LI groups; and 2) the role of the particular language on the LI profile. Before we present our study, a brief background on written English and French will provide background. French is a Romance language whereas English is part of the Germanic family. French has a highly developed system of inflectional morphology in which nouns are marked for gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular or plural) and articles and adjectives agree in both gender and number with the noun they modify (la petite fille, le petit garçon, les petites filles, les petits garçons). Verbs are inflected for number, person and tense. In addition, the pronominal system is complex, marking person, number and case; object and reflexive clitics are preverbal. In contrast, English has lost most of its inflectional morphology, although plural is marked for nouns, and verbs have a third person singular s in the present tense. In English, this impoverished morphology is phonologically realized whereas in French, much of the inflectional morphology is silent, posing a particular challenge for children learning to write. 3

4 With respect to written French and English, Modern English results from a series of historical changes and was strongly influenced by the introduction of French at the time of the Norman invasion of Britain in the 11th century, thus English orthography is a composite of different subsystems of spelling (principally Germanic, Norman-French, and Latin-Greek). Both French and English have deep or opaque orthographies and English has probably one of the most difficult and complex spelling to-sound correspondences (see Share, 1995, 2008). In fact, the major source of spelling difficulties results from the lack of correspondence between pronunciation of the words and their spelling. However, French also presents difficulties in that the French morphological system is highly complex, and its inflectional morphology is more or less silent. For example, in class 1 verbs er verbs, the inflectional endings for first (je parle); second (tu parles); and third person singular (elle, il parle), as well as third person plural (ils, elles parlent) all share the same pronunciation [parl], however, they have distinct written forms. To highlight these differences and the challenges posed to beginning writers, we present the same sentence in French and English: The little girl met her friend at the café and then they climbed the hill to go home. La petite fille a rencontré sa copine au café et puis elles sont montées la colline pour aller chez elle. (agreement markers for gender and number are underlined) 4

5 In summary, our goal is to see how these linguistic differences affect the acquisition of writing in French and English students, both those who are typically developing and those who are Language Impaired, as well as how these profiles change with age and experience. The Study Seventeen French speaking children and adolescents (ages 7-16) with LI and 31 typically developing (TD) age matched peers provided codable written stories as did 30 American English speaking participants with LI and 60 TD. In both language communities, children with Language Impairment were diagnosed by local speech language pathologists. To be included in the LI group, with the criteria included a significant language impairment in oral language in the absence of hearing impairment, frank neurologic deficits (seizure, CP, stroke) or significant social/emotional disorders. The child must have a non-verbal IQ score above 80, as well as score 1.5 or more Standard Deviations below the mean on a standardized language test of oral language (e.g., CELF-R). To address how growing up in a particular language community affects learning to write, we asked children and adolescents to write a story about a time when someone had made them mad or sad. After the children had written their stories, they were given an opportunity to read the story aloud and to edit their texts. Table 1 presents example texts from French and English speaking children, both typically developing and from those with Language Impairment. 5

6 ***Insert Table 1 here *** In assessing their written narratives we looked at a variety of linguistic indices: the length of their written narratives, the nature and rate of morphological and spelling errors, and finally, the use and types of complex syntax. Length was counted as the number of clauses; a clause is defined as a verb and its arguments. Morphological errors were both errors of commission and omission and included, for example, errors in number and gender agreement, subject-verb agreement, and verb tense. The total number of errors was divided by the total number of clauses to yield a proportion of errors. Complex sentences included, for example, clefts, those with verb complements, relative clauses, coordinate and subordinate connectors. Similar to the calculations for morphological errors, the total number of complex sentences was divided by the number of clauses to create a proportion of complex syntax. Spelling errors were tallied and the total was divided by the number of words in the text. Results and Discussion Statistical Approach The statistical results reported below are tests of simple effects which, essentially, test for group differences at specific levels of one or more other factors, e.g. TD-LI differences for French writers. These tests are different from plain t-tests within subgroups because in the tests of simple effects the entire data set, as opposed to a subset, is used to estimate the error variance and degrees of freedom for the statistical tests and the degrees of freedom are generally greater in the test of simple effects. 6

7 Story length (clauses) As can be seen in Figure 1, in English but not French, the samples differed in the length of their stories as measured by the number of clauses. Specifically, the TD group of English speakers wrote longer stories than the LI group (t=3.61, df=134, p<.001), whereas for the French groups, stories did not differ significantly in length across the two populations. And, as we see in Figure 2, separating the groups into children (ages 7-11) and adolescents (12-16), does not reveal statistically significant differences in performance by age for any of the four groups, that is, French TD, French LI, nor English TD nor English LI. However in the typically developing group of French students, there is a small (t=1.83,df=130,p=.069) trend toward longer stories in the adolescents than in the younger writers, but small numbers prevent our being able to make a strong statement. ***Insert Figures 1 and 2 here*** Morphology As noted above, an important difference in English and French is in inflectional morphology. To calculate rates of morphological errors (and complex syntax), we used the number of clauses in each as a denominator to control for varying lengths of the children s narratives. As can be seen in Figure 3, it appears that the French morphological system does indeed play an important role in the development of writing. Looking at Figure 3, for both the French and the English speaking children, the LI groups makes significantly more errors than their typically developing peers; for French writers t=3.54,df=134,p<.001 and for English writers t=2.13, df=134, p=.035. In addition, the French writers, both TD and LI 7

8 groups, make significantly more morphological errors than their English speaking counterparts t=11.57, df=134, p<.001. As such, the complexity and relative silence of French morphology clearly pose a challenge for all French students. However if we again split the groups into younger and older (Figure 4), we see that both the older TD French group(t=4.37, df=130, p<.001) and the older LI French group(t- 2.04, df=130, p=.043) make markedly fewer morphological errors than do their younger French counterparts; as such, both typically developing children and those with LI seem to be acquiring the French written system. For the English speakers, there are no statistically significant differences between the age groups in error rate: both younger and older LI groups make more errors than their TD peers. In sum, we see that age, language and neurodevelopmental status (TD vs LI) play a role: French students master the written morphology later than their English counterparts, but both French and English participants with LI continue to struggle with written morphology. ***Insert Figures 3 and 4 here**** Complex Syntax Whereas problems in grammatical morphology are a hallmark of Language Impairment, studies have also reported decreased use of complex syntax in narratives (e.g., Reilly et al., 2004; Scott & Windsor, 2000). To investigate the rate of complex sentences we calculated the frequency with which children used complex syntax by constructing proportions of complex structures divided by story length in clauses. Using complex or simple sentences is a rhetorical choice; simple sentences are perfectly grammatical. 8

9 However, using complex sentences, e.g. I had played a baseball game the day before, so I was sick and tired of baseball, makes explicit the relation between two (or more) events and increases the density of information. In comparing complex sentence rates, we found that for both language groups, the LI groups use less complex syntax than the controls; for French writers, t=3.16,df=134, p=.002, for English writers t=1.96, df=134, p=.05.,interestingly, the English speaking groups used relatively more complex sentences than the French speaking participants (t=4.40,df=134,p<.001)as can be seen in Figure 5. Looking across age groups (Figure 6), we see that for both languages the LI adolescents used more complex syntax than their younger counterparts (for French, t=2.62,df=130, p=.010; for English t=2.26, df=130, p=.026). *****Insert Figure 5 and 6 here***** What might explain such differences in syntactic profiles of the French and English students? According to studies of discourse that have looked at rhetorical styles across languages, English is characterized as one that relies heavily on hypotaxis or subordination, whereas French tends more towards isotaxis or favoring independent clauses over subordination. Interestingly, both French and English have a broad repertoire of sentence types; both languages include simple clauses, coordinate clauses and multiple types of subordination (e.g., clefts, relative and adverbial clauses). However, data from adult writers show preferences for particular syntactic constructions (Nir and Berman, 2010); specifically, adult French writers prefer simple over subordinate clauses whereas English writers use increased subordination. Interestingly, these same preferences of syntactic 9

10 style are evident in the children s writing as well. What is striking is that this feature of how language is used, that is, the preference for independent or subordinate clauses, is evident in the LI as well as the TD groups. Thus, it is not only that all these children are learning to write French or English, they are also learning the rhetorical style, in this case, the syntactic preferences for written language of their linguistic community. Spelling Finally we look at spelling in these two languages. Both have opaque writing systems, irregular sound-letter correspondences, and a substantial number of silent letters. In English, but not in French, (see Figure 7) the children with LI make more errors than their typically developing peers (t=3.04, df=134, p=.003), and in both languages, in both the TD and LI groups, the adolescents make fewer errors than younger children (see Figure 8); for French TD, t=2.41,p=.017, for French LI, t=2.55, p=.012, for English TD, t=2.40, p=.018, and for English LI, t=3.51,p,.001. All tests are based on df=130. In short, everyone is learning to spell. *****Insert Figures 7 and 8 here***** When we look more closely at the errors of the children, there are some interesting linguistic and group differences. Many spelling errors from the TD groups are phonologically plausible, e.g., sistr for sister in English and metrese for maîtresse in French. However, errors from the LI group also included more phonologically implausible spellings as in uling for ugly. Across languages, errors in English were largely word internal, e.g., 10

11 herd for heard. In contrast, in French, a sizeable number of errors were segmentation errors. Table 2 contains some examples of these types of errors. This difference may reflect the differing stress patterns of English and French where English stress is word delineated while French is a syllable timed language. In sum, both the structure of the language and the child s age and neurodevelopmental status affect his ability to spell. ***Insert Table 2 about here*** Conclusions In conclusion, we see that Language Impairment has significant effects on children s writing. Students with LI make more morphosyntactic errors, use less complex syntax and make more spelling errors in their writing than their typically developing peers. However, students, both typically developing and those with Language Impairment also very much reflect the language community in which they are growing up: French morphology is more challenging than that of English, regardless of group; French writers, both TD and LI, use less complex syntax in their writing than their English speaking counterparts. In sum, learning to write poses a greater challenge for children with Language Impairment than their typically developing peers, but both the structure of the target language, as well as the community s rhetorical preferences define and shape this challenge. Acknowledgement: This work was in part supported by P50 NS22343: Neurological Bases of Language, Learning and Cognition. We would like to thank Stephanie Chaminaud, Lucie Broc, and Jun O Hara for their help with transcription and data coding, Julian Parris for graphics, and the staff at PCND for collecting the children s stories. We are especially grateful to the children and their families who generously participated in these studies. 11

12 References Bishop, D.V.M. & Clarkson, B. (2003). Written Language as a window into residual language deficits: A study of children with persistent and residual speech and Language Impairments. Cortex, 39, Bishop, D. V. M. & Edmundson, A. (1987). Language-impaired 4-year-olds: Distinguishing transient from persistent impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 52, Dockrell, J.E., Lindsay, G. Connelly, V., & Mackie,C. (2007). Constraints in the Production of Written Text in Children With Specific Language Impairment Exceptional Children; Winter 2007; 73, 2, Fey, M. E., Catts, H. W., Proctor-Williams, K., Tomblin, J. B., & Zhang, X. (2004). Oral and written story composition skills of children with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, Gillam, R. B., & Johnston, J. (1992). Spoken and written language relationships in language/learning-impaired and normally achieving school age children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35(6), Leonard, L. (1998). Children with Specific Language Impairment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Nir, B., & Berman, R. (2010). Complex syntax as a window on contrastive rhetoric Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) Rice, M., Wexler, K., & Cleave, P. (1995). Specific language impairment as a period of extended optional infinitive. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, Scott, C. M., & Windsor, J. (2000). General language performance measures in spoken and written narrative and expository discourse of school-age children with language learning disabilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43, Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55, Share, D. L. (2008). On the Anglocentricities of current reading research and practice: The perils of overreliance on an" outlier" orthography. Psychological Bulletin, 134 (4),

13 Table 1. Example Narrative Texts from English and French Speaking Children English Written Narratives Caroline (TD) 9;0 Sometimes my best friend, Brianna, makes me mad. When we play handball, sometimes I get her out. She starts crying and tells a teacher. The teacher tells her to be a good sport and Brianna won t talk to me the rest of the day. That was last year. Now she rarely get_ mad a me, let alone at hand-ball. When I do get her out, she is a good sport but sometimes she passes back the ball a bit harsh as if she were silently fuming. Laura (LI) 9;1 I drow a picer f for my friend a and it make her fill good. I drew a picture for my friend and it made her feel good*. French Written Narratives Célia (TD) 9:9 Le matin moi et Flavie ont étaient copine_ et quand je revien_ l après midi elle n ait n était plus ma copine. Elle me dit c est parce-que tu ne joue_ pas avec moi. Je lui répons que je joue toujours avec elle. Et Flavie me dit je n ai suis plus ta copine. Et Flavie me dit qu elle n ait plus ma copine. Coralie (LI) 9 ; 6 C est un copine et c est bas caré avec ma cousine à mon anniverser_ C est une copine qui s est bagarrée avec ma cousine à mon anniversaire *Italicized version is what the child read back to the experimenter and is included for clarity. Errors are underlined. 13

14 Table 2. Spelling Errors in English and French from Written Narratives from Students with Language Impairment Errors in English Errors in French stcay: Stacy* mavoler: m a volé trae: trash Ses té: c était chufball: trouble commen ses: commencer thone: threw alecole: à l école a stopon: accept bas caré: bagarré srtr: shirt le caleuabe: l escalope hirrind: Harrington cuisiniaire: cuisinière *target word 14

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