CONTENTS 1 Preface Nan Bernstein Ratner, Ed.D. SECTION I: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 3 The Challenge of Language Assessment for African American English-Speaking Children: A Historical Perspective Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D. 13 Theoretical and Empirical Bases for Dialect-Neutral Language Assessment: Contributions from Theoretical and Applied Linguistics to Communication Disorders Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D. 27 Steps in Designing and Implementing an Innovative Assessment Instrument Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D., and Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D. 33 Dialect Identification versus Evaluation of Risk in Language Screening Lois Ciolli, M.A., C.C.C.-S.L.P., and Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D. SECTION II: KEY CONCEPTS AND EXAMPLES FOR THE DOMAINS OF THE PROPOSED TESTS 41 Diagnosing Language Variations: Underlying Principles for Syntactic Assessment Thomas Roeper, Ph.D. 57 Assessing Pragmatic Skills in Elicited Production Peter de Villiers, Ph.D. 73 Cultural and Linguistic Fairness in the Assessment of Semantics Jill G. de Villiers, Ph.D. 91 A Noncontrastive Model for Assessment of Phonology Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D. SECTION III: PRACTICAL ISSUES AND GOALS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 101 Distinguishing Dialect and Development from Disorder: Case Studies Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D., and Lois Ciolli, M.A., C.C.C.-S.L.P. 113 Conclusions, Future Directions, and Implications for Remediation Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D., Thomas Roeper, Ph.D., and Jill G. de Villiers, Ph.D. C-1 Continuing Education Self-Study Program