Parisot, A.-M. et A. De La Durantaye (2005) "Sign language assessment by speech-language pathologists? Presentation of a tool to assess phonological skills in Quebec Sign Language", Fit for the future. 20th International Congress on the Education of the Deaf (ICDE), Maastricht, Pays-Bas, 17-20 juillet 2005.
Since the majority of deaf children are often not provided with the right conditions
to acquire a signed language as a fust language (Lhuissier, 2000), the development
of tools assessing sign language skills seems relevant and urgent in order to
intervene within programs of bilingual language rehabilitation at the preschoollevel.
On the basis of this need, we developed a tool to assess the phonological skills
of preschool level deaf children using Quebec Sign Language (LSQ). This tool
was created by a team of linguists, speech-language pathologists and occupational
therapists. The objectives of our talk will be as follows: 1) discuss the relevance
of and the need for assessment tools testing LSQ skills in a rehabilitation
context in the province of Quebec, and 2) present a detailed description of
the different stages of conception and development of the tool. The development
of the assessment tool was based on two theoretical frameworks: theories of
acquisition and description of signed languages along with theories addressing
the methodologies used in the conception of assessment tools for speech-language
pathologists. A number of studies on the acquisition of signs and their internaI
structure (BoyesBream, 1990; Marentette & Mayberry, 2000; Meier et al. 1998;
Siedlecki & Bonvillian, 1997; Parisot et al, 2000, etc.) have shown that
handshape, location, and movement could be independent sources of errors in
the signed productions of deaf children. The elements we controlled in the conception
of the assessment tool of LSQ phonological skills are those usually controlled
in assessment tools for the phonology of oral languages (Bergeron, 1997): word
frequency, phoneme representativeness along with levels of articulatory and
conceptual complexity.
ln the first part of our talk, we will present a detailed portrait of the different
conception stages of our tool (choice of lexical elements, phonological description
of the items, definition of articulatory and conceptual complexity and tryout
of a prototype). ln the second part, we will discuss two problems related to
the efficiency of the tool: the actual system of LSQ phonetic representation
and the shape and design of the evaluation grids.