An automated version of the BAT Syntactic Comprehension task for assessing auditory L2 proficiency in healthy adults

André Achim, Alexandra Marquis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Studies of bilingualism sometimes require healthy subjects to be assessed for proficiency at auditory sentence processing in their second language (L2). The Syntactic Comprehension task of the Bilingual Aphasia Test could satisfy this need. For ease and uniformity of application, we automated its English (Paradis, M., Libben, G., and Hummel, K. (1987). The Bilingual Aphasia Test. English version. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) and French (Paradis, M., & Goldblum, M. C. (1987). The Bilingual Aphasia Test, French version. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) versions. Although the Bilingual Aphasia Test is meant to assess neurological disorders affecting language, we hypothesised that ceiling performance in L2 would be rare and L2 errors should be consistent with lack of processing automaticity. Initial data from 13 French-English and 4 English-French bilinguals confirm these expectations. Thus, the automated Syntactic Comprehension task (available online for PC and Mac platforms) is indeed suited to test bilingual English and French proficiency levels in healthy adults.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)655-669
Number of pages15
JournalClinical Linguistics and Phonetics
Volume25
Issue number6-7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Bilingual Aphasia Test
  • L2 assessment
  • multilingualism

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language
  • Speech and Hearing

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