Key Terms

Curriculum-based language assessment

An assessment aimed at identifying and analyzing potential gaps between a particular context’s linguistic demands and a learner’s linguistic competence. It also involves determining the type of support that a child needs to ensure mastery of the linguistic demands of the curriculum.

Matching perception

Refers to language demands that require the child to respond to or report on salient perceptual information inherent to a task. The language skills required include matching, identifying objects by sound or touch, labeling and describing, imitating, and remembering previously seen objects and information.

Selective analysis of perception

Refers to language demands that require the child to focus more particularly on the characteristics of objects or events that are common to preschool classrooms. Questions are aimed at identifying skills such as whether the child can identify the functions of objects, describe events, recall information, and categorize objects.

Reordering perception

Refers to language demands that require the child to evaluate materials and ideas that exclude salient perceptual information and that involve materials and events that are not currently being perceived.

Reasoning about perception

Refers to language demands that require the child to respond to complex verbal problems that involve drawing inferences, making predictions, and assuming another person’s perspective.

Contextualized language

A type of language that relates to people, objects, or events in the immediate environment.

Decontextualized language

A type of language that refers to an imagined context or to objects and events that are detached from the immediate context.

Narrative discourse

A type of discourse that involves skills such as the ability to relate personal experiences and retell stories. It occurs frequently in the classroom and social environments.

Expository discourse

A type of discourse, critical to academic success, that utilizes the formal language found in textbooks and teachers’ presentations.

Semantic context

Refers to the meanings of words, phrases, or sentences. Can be experiential (i.e., draw on a child’s prior knowledge and experiences) or erudite (i.e., the ideas and meanings expressed go beyond a literal interpretation and are embedded in historical, cultural, and world views).

Zones of significance

Refers to contextually based language areas that two or more team members identify as curricular objectives that must be attained by students in a particular setting. It is the first step in a language-based curriculum analysis.

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM)

A set of standardized procedures used to measure student progress in basic school curriculum areas.