The number of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students has been growing significantly in recent years (Counts, Katsiyannis, & Whitford, 2018). With this quick growth comes an equally critical need for accurate evaluation, effective treatment in speech-language pathology as well as other related services for CLD students in the school system. There is a significant need for resources to support speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to work with CLD clients. Research indicates that specific learning disability (SLD) accounts for 50% of all identified disabilities among CLD populations (Langdon, 2008). SLD is a disorder characterized by one or more significant impairments in reading, spelling, writing, or mathematical skills, which are not the direct result of other disorders or inadequate schooling. This chapter focuses on Nancy, a CLD student with the diagnosis of SLD. The study discusses approaches and strategies to provide appropriate language services for Nancy.
CLD Issues in Communication Disorders
Currently 7,099 languages are spoken in the world (Simons & Fennig, 2017). The use of a language other than English at home is at an all-time high (Simons & Fennig, 2017), and is estimated to continue to increase, particularly in languages such as Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, and Russian (Rumbaut & Massey, 2013). According to the 2010 American Community Survey (as cites in Rumbaut & Massey, 2013), 20.3% of the U.S. residents reported that they spoke a non-English language at home. It was noted that the percentage of the population who spoke only English by decade between 1980 and 2010 decreased from 89.1% to 79.7% (Rumbaut & Massey, 2013). In 2016, 22% of the children in U.S. spoke a language other than English at home (Kids Count Data Center [KCDC], 2018), and this number increased to 23% in 2017 (KCDC, 2019). According to Migration Policy Institute (2016), CLD students have increased more than 50% over the past decade, and this trend is expected to continue into the next decade. With the rapid multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual growth at schools, classroom teachers and SLPs have a critical role to play in identifying and meeting the needs of all students, including CLD students’ language development and abilities. With this extreme growth in multilingualism comes an equally extreme need for accurate evaluation and effective treatment for CLD children in the school system. SLPs have to adjust to a variety of populations with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds instead of relying on “one-size-fits-all paradigm” (Centeno, 2015; Langdon, 2008, 2015; Levey et al., 2013; Ooi & Wong, 2012).