Facing the Daunting Task of Assessing (Deaf) Bilinguals

Over the last two decades, there has been increasing movement in the area of signed language assessment for different groups of learners. This is a promising trend, as it has made signed language tests more available to researchers and practitioners in different countries. However, it has also brought new challenges, including the question of whom these instruments should be normed on—for example, deaf children with deaf parents, who have early access to signed language, or deaf children with hearing parents, who represent the majority of the deaf population (i.e., children with hearing losses ranging from slight to profound). It is well known that the (signing) deaf population is heterogeneous, not only with regard to degree of hearing loss, onset of language, and type of amplification, but also in relation to home language and culture and the existence of any additional needs. This heterogeneity, along with the small size of the population (particularly in countries other than the United States or the larger European countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany), poses a number of limitations for test developers when it comes to applying common statistical procedures to establish psychometric properties of a test to assure its reliability and validity. In addition, the state of research on most signed languages is still underdeveloped, a situation that has resulted in limited availability of resources to researchers, practitioners, and others interested in signed language acquisition and assessment.

In light of the paucity of available literature on signed language assessment or access to standardized and commercially available signed language tests, it seems necessary to cast a wider net in the search for information. In this context, Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals makes an excellent choice for anyone interested in language assessment of members of minority groups. The first of a set of two volumes edited by Virginia Mueller Gathercole (the second is Solutions for the Assessment of Bilinguals, also published in 2013 by Multilingual Matters), it offers a comprehensive picture of the issues involved in assessing bilingual children or adults, including one of many important messages, that assessments should be normed “against similar populations with similar experience with the languages(s) in question” (Mueller Gathercole, p. 232). Mueller Gathercole, who is no stranger to bilingual matters, due to her own work with monolingual and bilingual populations at Florida International University and Bangor University (Wales), brings as editor a unique combination of internationally renowned experts in the field, along with new researchers and practitioners, all of whom contribute to the success of this book.

Organization of the Book

The presented research includes consideration of a variety of bilingual populations from around the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a number of common themes across countries, which render the issues discussed applicable to bilingual populations anywhere, including deaf populations. For instance, one main area focuses on the realistic expectations used to evaluate performance of children who grow up as bilinguals.

Within its 256 pages, Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals covers several important aspects of the assessment of different bilingual populations. These aspects, the driving forces behind the need for improvement in many existing assessments, include the identification of language impairment, ways to monitor children’s progress in language or education, and ways to measure second-language (L2) learners’ abilities in childhood or adulthood. They highlight the multifaceted issues related to obtaining information on the bilingual abilities of children and adults and determining the best way of assessing these abilities.

Important Aspects Related to Assessment

The edited volume comprises 10 chapters covering a wide breadth of topics, ranging from measuring bilinguals’ reaction time on lexical tasks and assessing writing skills to a retrospective on the policies under the No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States. Apart from the first couple of chapters, which provide excellent introductions to the subject and to the importance of language exposure to language assessment, the rest of the volume can be read in any given order. While some chapters may...