Monday, December 1, 2008

English Language Acquisition in Children Adopted From China

Way back in 2001, I participated in a study about speech and English language development in China adoptees. The results of that study, and some other studies as well, can be found at this website. Yesterday, I got an email from the researchers about a follow-up study: "The majority of children who took part in the longitudinal study are now in school, and we have designed a follow-up study to investigate more complex language and academic skills. Little research currently exists concerning longer-term outcomes for our children. Because of the data you provided as part of the longitudinal study, we have a unique opportunity to directly examine the relationship between early speech-language skills and later school-age language and academic abilities."

Too cool! We'll happily participate -- it will be interesting to see the results in the near future.

2 comments:

Lesley said...

Cool! I read that study (and found your blog) recently when I was researching whether or not to do something about our dd's speech, or wait it out. We decided to go ahead with some E/I programs and see how that unfolds...she gets evaluated in a couple of weeks. She was adopted just before her 2nd birthday. She will be 4 in a couple of weeks, and while her vocab has gone from 0-1 million since she got here, she has difficulties saying most things correctly and there is frustration on both sides sometimes.

Jeff and Madeline said...

Awesome! We are in our own adoption "fame" right now too (I will email you privately).
It is so great that the girls are still available for study, long term is the only real indication.