ESL Children There Are Often

ESL Children

There are often difficulties in differentiating between intrinsic processing disorders and extrinsic factors that affect student performance, such as language acquisition proficiency. Lock & Layton (2002). Conducted a study that examined how young students with limited English proficiency (LEP are often mistakenly identified as learning disabled. This occurs because of the similarities between deficits of intrinsic processing and the general process of the acquisition of a second language. These researchers evaluated the efficacy of a recently published observational tool called the Learning Disabilities Diagnostic Inventory (LDDI) that was designed to identify the possible presence of intrinsic processing disorders. This was accomplished through the comparison of LDDI results of non-disabled LEP students and non-disabled English speaking students in order to assess the frequency of the likelihood of intrinsic processing difficulties. The research question for the study was as follows: "Does the LDDI identify non-disabled, normally achieving students with LEP as having intrinsic processing disorders more frequently than it identifies non-disabled, English-speaking only, normal achieving students (Lock & Layton, 2002)."

The raters for the study were 30 general educators in urban and rural areas of Texas and New Mexico. All the teachers were female and the range of ages was 26 to 53, with an average of 12 years of teaching service. Each teacher administered four LDDIs, including two LEP students and two English-only students. The teachers received some training on administration of the LDDI prior to the study.

The student participants in the study were from the ages of 8 to 12 and were in grades 2 to 7. All the students were in general education and none had been previously identified as requiring special education services. Therefore, all these students were not experiencing any sort of academic failure. Two measures of language us and proficiency, the Home Language Survey and the Language acquisition Scale, were administered to all students. These measures identified which students were LEP and could be eligible for the study. The sample was fort-eight percent male and fifty-two percent female.

There were two data collectors that scored the result of the LDDI administrations. These diagnosticians both held doctorates in special education with special certification as Educational Diagnosticians. The LDDI results were rated separately and were compared with an inter-rater reliability of.99. Results were categorized independently and were then categorizations in three areas were compared: positively identified, not identified, and questionable.

The LDDI is a survey instrument with six independent scales used to identify specific learning disabilities. These scales include: Listening, Reading, Writing, Mathematics, and Reasoning. Each scale has fifteen items associated with behaviors that typically indicate specific intrinsic processing disorders.

The teachers chose four students each, two LEP and two English, to complete the LDDI. None of the students were experiencing academic failure and none had been referred to special education. The LDDI was completed by each student, and the teacher raters completed demographic sheets for each student. External evaluators scored the LDDI tests.

To obtain results two statistical procedures were executed. First, independent t-tests indicated significant differences (at the.0001 level) between the two groups for all sub-tests of the LDDI, except for the writing subtest (.002 level of confidence). Second, a Pearson Chi Square analysis examined the frequency of the number of students the LDDI identified as having difficulties with intrinsic processing. This indicated that LEP students were identified as having learning disorders almost twice as often as English-only students, with significance at the.05 level.