Assessing sign language development.
Bencie Woll & Rosalind Herman, Sallie Holmes.

The development of language is a crucial factor in a deaf child cognitive and social development. An understanding of this and of issues relating to the assessment of developing language are of importance to all professionals concerned with deaf children. Language development has been the focus of concern since the first deaf schools were established in the 18th century. The promotion of full and normal development of language is shared by all, but how this is to be achieved, and which language or languages are learned, is a continuing source of controversy.

Those most concerned with spoken language development have focused on the factors which may promote or hinder acquisition and on extent to which language delay results in language deviance and difficulties. Interest in sign language acquisition is more recent. Following the recognition in the 1970s that sign languages were complete human languages, with their own grammars and lexicons, and were neither primitive gestural systems nor derived from spoken languages, sign languages have been seen as whorty of study not only in their own right, but as a means to develop understanding of human language generally, both spoken and signed. Thus much research on sign language and its acquisition has been designed to address such topics as whether sign language and spoken language are localised to the same brain areas, theories about neural plasticity and critical periods for language development ; and the long term outcomes of late first language acquisition.

In this paper, consideration will be given to issues relating to the assessment of language. While there is an enormous body of assessment material for English, the administration of English measures to deaf children is itself problematic, raising questions of age norms, language of testing, etc. In contrast to the large number of English assessments, there are limited tools available for assessing sign language. Underlying principles of assessing sign will be outlined ans assessment tools recently developed for BSL will be discussed.