ASSESSING THE GRAMMAR OF SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN - A COMPARISON OF 2 PROCEDURES

The present investigation compared two testing instruments for evaluat ing the grammatical skills of Spanish-speaking preschool children. The Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool (SPELT-P, Werner & Kresheck, 1989) was compared to a structured task activity de veloped by the investigator. Both procedures targeted the same grammat ical forms. Results indicated that the structured task procedure was m ore effective in evaluating children's productive knowledge of the gra mmatical forms tested. Children performed significantly better in this task. Procedural differences across the testing instruments were resp onsible for the observed differences. Issues concerning the effect of task on performance are discussed as they relate to the assessment of the culturally and linguistically diverse child.