LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY QUESTIONNAIRE
By Larry J. Mattes
and
George Santiago
When non-English speaking children are referred for speech-language evaluations, it is important to collect information about their background and to examine their functional use of English and their first language in a variety of speaking contexts. Speech-language pathologists and other members of the assessment team often have limited opportunities for the direct observation of children in contexts outside of the school or clinic. Therefore, it is essential that the child’s parents be interviewed.
The Bilingual Language Proficiency Questionnaire (BLPQ) is a 30-item parent interview tool designed for use in the speech and language assessment of school-age children who speak a first language other than English. The questionnaire can be used to obtain information about the child’s effectiveness in using language to describe events, express feelings, request information, and for various other speaking purposes. The BLPQ also includes items examining the extent to which the child has been exposed to English and to the first language in the home and community.
INTERVIEWER QUALIFICATIONS
The BLPQ should be administered by individuals who are fluent speakers of the child’s first language. Bilingual speech-language pathologists and other special education specialists are the individuals best qualified to conduct interviews. When the availability of bilingual professionals with specialized training in working with handicapped children is limited, the use of bilingual instructional aides and other paraprofessionals may become necessary. Paraprofessionals, however, should never be permitted to conduct interviews using the BLPQ without first being trained by a speech-language pathologist. Paraprofessionals must understand the purpose of each of the items on the questionnaire. They also must have the ability to establish the rapport necessary to elicit detailed responses from the parent. The use of a translator may be necessary to conduct the interview.
CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEWS
Prior to interviewing the parent, the individual items on the questionnaire should be reviewed by a speech-language pathologist who is familiar with the nature of the referral. Additional questions may need to be added to the questionnaire in some cases. If it is known that the child has a cleft palate, for example, it would be appropriate to develop questions relevant to the medical treatment that the child has received, etc.
It is important to inform parents of the purpose of the interview and to encourage them to give detailed responses to the individual questions. If the parent fails to provide sufficient detail in response to an item on the questionnaire, the interviewer should ask questions designed specifically to elicit the information needed. A parent, for example, may respond “yes” when asked, “Does your child have problems producing specific consonant sounds?” If the parent fails to give a spontaneous description of the specific problems that have been observed, it would be appropriate to ask questions such as, “What speech sounds does the child have difficulty producing?”, “How difficult is it to understand what your child is trying to say?”, and so forth. The goal of the interview is to collect as much information as possible about the child’s development and use of the spoken language.
If the parent has difficulty understanding a particular question, the interviewer should rephrase that question or give examples. Question 30 on the questionnaire, for example, is designed to elicit information about specific stuttering behaviors that have been observed in the child’s speech. When presenting this question, it may be helpful for the interviewer to demonstrate syllable repetitions, prolongations of sounds, and other stuttering behaviors for the parent.
RECORDING RESPONSES
The parent’s responses may be recorded on the questionnaire as the interview is being conducted or tape-recorded for analysis after the interview is completed.
USING THE INTERVIEW DATA
The accurate identification of communication disorders is often difficult when children speak two languages. In addition to examining performance in the structural and functioning aspects of communication, it is important to examine the extent to which the child has been provided with opportunities to use each language in functional communication contexts. Language exposure variables need to be considered so that problems resulting from limited opportunities to use the language can be distinguished from disorders. The BLPQ provides information about the bilingual child’s functional use of language in natural speaking contexts that can be helpful in distinguishing normal languages differences from problems that are indicative of a communicative disorder.
The information obtained from the questionnaire should prove to be of value to assessment personnel when interpreting the results of formal tests administered in the school setting. A bilingual child, for example, may perform poorly on a norm-referenced Spanish language than the “average” child in the standardization sample. It is inappropriate, however, to consider this child “handicapped”. Each child has unique experiences in using the spoken language and these experiences must be considered when interpreting the results of formal tests.