Purpose: Bilingual children are often diagnosed with language
impairment, although they may simply have fewer opportunities
to learn English than English-speaking monolingual children.
This study examined whether dynamic assessment (DA) of word
learning skills is an effective method for identifying bilingual
children with primary language impairment (PLI).
Method: Fifteen 4- and 5-year-old predominantly Spanishspeaking children with typical language development (TLD) and
13 with PLI each participated in a 30- to 40-min session of DA of
word learning skills following a pretest–teach–posttest design.
Results: Results indicated that TLD children made associations
between the phonological and semantic representations of
the new words faster than children with PLI did, showing
greater modifiability. Further, a combination of word learning
in the receptive modality and the Learning Strategies Checklist
(Lidz, 1991; Peña, 1993) provided the best accuracy in identifying PLI in these children.
Conclusion: Findings suggest that a brief DA is a promising
method for accurately differentiating children with TLD from
children with PLI.