Language Assessment Tools

Examples of Sign Language Tests

The British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test (Herman, Holmes, & Woll, 1999) was one of the first tests developed for sign language. This test assesses the comprehension of specific morpho-syntactic structures (e.g., spatial verb morphology, negation, number, and distribution) in British Sign Language (BSL) by deaf children aged 3–13. The test has been normed on 135 children and shows evidence for reliability and validity. It uses a multiple-choice format. This test has been adapted for a number of other sign languages, including American Sign Language (ASL) and German Sign Language. An online version that will be usable with different sign languages is currently under development.

The Test Instrument for Sign Language of the Netherlands (Hermans, Knoors, & Verhoeven, 2010) is another test that is currently available to schools. It consists of nine different computer-based subtests that focus on receptive and expressive Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) skills across different domains (i.e., phonology, morpho-syntax, and narrative skills). This test has been developed for children 4–12 years of age and has been normed on 330 deaf children.

The American Sign Language–Proficiency Assessment (ASL-PA; Maller, Singleton, Supalla, & Wix, 1999) is used to determine nonnative deaf children’s level of ASL proficiency, with the goal of monitoring their acquisition process. The ASL-PA assesses a broad range of linguistic structures of ASL, for example, one-sign/two-sign utterances, nonmanual markers (e.g., wh- questions), and deictic pointing/indexing. The test has been used with 80 deaf children aged 6–12 years. The test is used mainly for research purposes, although it is planned to make the ASL-PA available to teachers.

The BSL Web-Based Vocabulary Test (Mann & Marshall, 2012) assesses deaf children’s lexical [Page 552]development in BSL, specifically their knowledge of different form-meaning mappings (i.e., meaning recognition, form recognition, meaning recall, and form recall). The test consists of two receptive and two productive tasks, which measure different degrees of vocabulary strength in children aged 5–15. So far, scores are available for 68 children, although additional scores are being collected. The test has recently been adapted for ASL.

Availability and Usability of Sign Language Tests for Schools

Teachers and other professionals working with deaf children and young adults depend on appropriate assessment tests to measure their students’ sign language skills. However, the number of assessment tests for sign languages is limited, and even fewer of these tests are suitable for use in educational settings. The limited availability of standardized sign language assessments proves to be particularly challenging for practitioners, who need these instruments to evaluate deaf children’s sign language acquisition against normative developmental milestones. Consequently, decisions about appropriate educational placements or recommended interventions for deaf children are generally based on assessments of spoken and written language skills, with only impressionistic assessments being made of sign language skills.

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