Assessing children’s language development: a systematic literature review on early language milestone scales
Early language milestone (ELM) scales are used to assess language development in young children, especially for early detection of atypical language development. However, not all ELM scales are layperson-friendly and are suitable for all language acquirers. Therefore, this article presents a s...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2024
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25008/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25008/1/Gema%20Online_24_4_2.pdf |
| Summary: | Early language milestone (ELM) scales are used to assess language development in young
children, especially for early detection of atypical language development. However, not all ELM
scales are layperson-friendly and are suitable for all language acquirers. Therefore, this article
presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the existing ELM scales. This SLR used the PICo
approach to select and review past studies ranging from 2013 to 2023, investigating the
language(s), the target groups, and the constructs and items of existing ELM scales. Past studies
on ELM scales were identified via the PRISMA approach from four online databases, namely,
Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and Science Direct. From a total of 892 studies, only 19 studies
were systematically reviewed; they cover ELM scales in 18 languages and language varieties
which have been proven to be reliable and valid. Generally, the results show that the existing ELM
scales can be used to assess children’s language development in terms of receptive and expressive
language skills from an early age. The findings show that the ELM scales were primarily developed
to gauge the language development of children acquiring English as their first and/or second
language; however, no ELM scale has been developed to meet the needs of children acquiring
English and Malay as their first languages in the Malaysian context. This SLR directs future
research on developing an ELM scale for Malay-English bilingual first language acquirers. |
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