Standard American English (SAE) is the mainstream or standard dialect of English most commonly spoken in the United States. Standard dialects are distinguishable because they are generally supported and used by institutions such as governments, schools, literature, and television. It is also sometimes called “Mainstream American English” or MAE.
Source URL: View this document on the ASHA website
This was one of the first of many articles publishing research demonstrating the severe limitations of using commercially available child language tests when assessing children for speech and language disability. Read More
Source URL: View this article on PubMed
This study provided evidence that typically developing children acquiring English exhibit errors on standardized tests that are similar to the performance of monolingual children with specific language impairment.
ModelEval30-AAESAE-SevereLanguageDelay-ShakenBabySyndrome.pdf
Anthony is a 3-year-old child with multiple-handicaps. He has “Shaken Baby Syndrome” due to abuse. He lives with his grandmother who primarily speaks AAE, but is also exposed to SAE. With all children, but especially children with severe multiple handicaps, it is critical to describe the child’s strengths which can be built upon in developing strategies to improve the child’s functional communication.
Oscar is a 4 year, 2 month old child who is strongly English dominant. His mother is African-American and speaks English. His father is of Puerto Rican decent and is fluent in Spanish and English. Oscar is a bright boy, but with some evidence of concrete thinking similar to that seen with Asperger’s syndrome.
Henry is a 3 year, 5 month old child who speaks African American Vernacular English. He was recently placed in a foster home so there is little background information. Henry is descriptive and communicative during play.
Source URL: View this book on the Teacher’s College Press website
This book addresses the constellation of factors that have contributed to the misidentification of minority/culturally and linguistically diverse children as needing special education services. It also provides suggestions for improving the special education referral process.
One of the biggest sources of bias in standardized tests is the fact that the tests are written by and designed for speakers of Standard American English. Part of the work of LEADERS is to show that we live in a world full of dialectal variations and that these dialects are rule-governed linguistic systems, not evidence of a language disorder. However, in an effort to familiarize ourselves with the dialects of the communities in which we work (African American English, Hispanized English, etc) it can be easy to forget that what we see in the real world may not fit into any of the categories we study in class. Read More
Linguistic bias can be bias towards speakers of other languages or dialects, or towards bilingual speakers and results in inaccurate assessment of children from linguistic backgrounds other than Standard American English. As a result, minorities are overrepresented in special education programs (IDEA 2004). Read More
The LEADERSproject by Dr. Catherine (Cate) Crowley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.leadersproject.org.
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