English Language Test for Indian Children (ELTIC)

Abstract

Language development is a process that starts early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by imitations. Children with sensory impairments have delay in speech and language skills. Many assessment tools were developed in the past decades that help in providing the child with early intervention, due to which the language skills delaying for some extent can be improved. In particular these days English language has been used most of the time by the children. Therefore, this study was developed to assess the English language abilities in children with English as their second language. The aims of the study were, to develop English Language Test for the Indian children (ELTIC) and to study the developmental pattern for acquisition of language skills in children. Participants in the present study included 80 typically developing children in the age range of 4.0- 6.0 years, who were grouped into four as 4.0-4.6 years, 4.7-5.0 years, 5.1-5.6 years, and 5. 7-6.0 years. The test was developed based on the Bankson Language Screening Test (BLST; Bankson, 1977) which was named as English Language test for Indian Children (ELTIC). It included three domains namely, Semantic knowledge, Morphological rules, and Syntactic rules. The results showed that there was a developmental trend observed in the performance of the children from younger to older groups i.e., 4.0-6.0 years across all domains of language mentioned.