Brugia Malayi - Clark Science Center - Smith College

Creating a Mandarin Language Test in Order to Diagnose Specific
Language Impairment in China
Tarra Murphy
Currently in China, there is no field of speech language pathology. Speech language pathologists do many different things, and
one of those things is to diagnose children with specific language impairment (SLI) so that they can receive the help they need.
Working in conjunction with Dr. Liu, a Chinese speech language pathologist in Texas, and Dr. Ning, a professor from Tianjin
University, Jill de Villiers has been working on creating a Mandarin language test.
Dr. Ning and his research team created a pilot test of their own and conducted research on about 700-800 Mandarin-speaking
children in China. The children varied in age, ranging from three years to nine years. The children were tested on many different
things, including syntax, sentence production, pronunciation, tones, etc., for a test with almost 200 items.
The data from Dr. Ning’s research was sent to our lab, and the data seemed to show that the children had scored along a
favorable curve. I ran several univariate analyses of variance through SPSS, looking carefully at statistical differences for the scores
on each portion of the test. From this we were able to compare how the children from each age group scored, and the significant
differences between the age groups which would signal growth with age. It was concluded that some of the sections of the
test were far too easy, and others far too difficult. Furthermore, there was very little growth with age by subtest. I used my basic
knowledge of Mandarin as well as my linguistics training to help critique the items and suggest alternatives. After the statistics were
compiled and analyzed, Jill de Villiers and Dr. Liu traveled to China to present the findings to Dr. Ning and give suggestions as
how to improve the children’s scores.
The research on this project is ongoing, and will continue through the school year. Also, per the request of Dr. Ning, the
details of this project will not be disclosed until published. Now that the flaws of the pilot test have been identified, we hope to
strengthen it by removing ambiguities, lowering the possibility of chance, and searching through published linguistic studies done
on Mandarin to find inspiration for improving the test. (Supported by the Frances Baker Holmes Fund)
Advisor: Jill de Villiers
2012
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