A STUDY OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE PATHOLOGISTS AND THEIR MEXICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE DISORDERED CASELOADS (ETHNOGRAPHIC, HISPANIC, BILINGUAL)

The purpose of this study was to describe the beliefs, practices, and perceptions of speech/language pathologists concerning Mexican-American bilingual children. Characteristics of Mexican-American children receiving language therapy were generated through interviews with twenty speech/language pathologists and data sheets that had specific language and background information for each child on these clinicians' caseloads. These descriptions and generated characteristics provided a profile of Mexican-American children who were being seen for language therapy. A pool of children with these common characteristics was then formed. Three children were randomly selected and studied over four months in naturalistic settings such as their schools, neighborhoods, and home. The children's social, linguistic, and discourse competencies were then compared to the profile suggested by the speech/language pathologists' interviews and data sheets.;The conclusion of the study suggested that two of the three children studied for four months were not language-disordered but were limited English speakers with limited exposure to the English language. The third child was language-disordered. An ecological definition of a language-disorder in Mexican-American children was suggested as well as this researcher's suggestion for assessment of language skills.;The results indicated that the clinicians lacked basic knowledge about the Mexican-American culture and bilingualism. Most of the Mexican-American children referred for language testing were referred because of academic and comprehension problems in the classroom. The 109 children receiving therapy were described as having good syntactical skills but difficulty with more complex morphological and semantic abilities in language. The interviews and data sheets suggested that children who were likely be referred came from low income, low parent educational background, with Spanish used at home. The children were from 6 to 9 years of age, referred in grades 2, 3, or 4, and had been retained once. The study of the three children suggested that social competencies differed for two children who were not seen by the parents as language-disordered and the one child who was believed by the parents to be language-disordered.