Online Resources for the Vietnamese Language:
Assessment Tools and Learning Modules
BACKGROUND
Vietnamese is the fifth most commonly spoken language in the United States with a population of nearly two million speakers. There continues to be a shortage of clinical resources and bilingual personnel familiar with the language.
Globally, there is a shortage of Vietnamese-speaking SLPs. In the US, 6% of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) members report being fluent in a second language, and the majority of bilingual providers speak Spanish (ASHA, 2018). Only 1% of ASHA members are of Asian descent, of which a small percentage speak Vietnamese. In Vietnam, the SLP field has just begun. With the support of international collaborations (Eitel et al., 2017), about 70 SLPs have been trained in Vietnam for a country of over 90 million people.
Research and clinical resources are needed for Vietnamese-speaking populations. There is an emerging literature on typical language development for Vietnamese monolingual children (e.g., Tran 2010) and bilingual children (e.g., Pham & Kohnert, 2014). Few studies are available on communicative disorders in Vietnamese children (e.g., Pham et al., 2019). There are no standardized tests that measure Vietnamese language development, and access to assessment tools is limited.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
This project, Vietslp aims to address the communicative needs of Vietnamese populations worldwide through the creation of online resources. There are three project objectives:
1. Provide foundational information on Vietnamese-English dual language learners.
2. Provide free access to research-based Vietnamese assessment tools.
Objective 1 - Foundational Information. We have created 5 online lectures: (1) Introduction to the social and linguistic context for Vietnamese language learners in the United States; (2) Typical language development in dual language learners; (3) Developmental language disorder in Vietnamese; (4) Language assessment; and (5) Language intervention. Please complete the free registration form to access this information (click on Sign Up on the top left corner).
Objective 2 - Assessment tools. We have built a repository of assessment tools and related video training modules on this webpage (click on Assessment Tools).
FUNDING
2019 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Grant Program for Projects on Multicultural Activities awarded to Giang Pham.
REFERENCES
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2018). Data Snapshot: ASHA Bilingual Service Providers, Year-End 2018. Retrieved from https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/Demographic-Profile-Bilingual-Spanish-Service-Members.pdf
Eitel, S., Tran, H. V., & Management Systems International (2017). Speech and language therapy assessment in Vietnam. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID): Vietnam Evaluation, Monitoring and Survey Services Project (VEMSS). Retrieved from pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00MJHP.pdf
Pham, G. & Kohnert, K. (2014). A longitudinal study of lexical development in children learning Vietnamese and English. Child Development, 85, 767-782.
Pham, G., Pruitt-Lord, S., Snow, C.E., Nguyen, H.T.Y., Pham, B., Dao, T.B.T., Tran, N.B.T., Pham, L.T., Hoang, H.T., & Dam, Q.D. (2019). Identifying developmental language disorder in Vietnamese children. Advanced online publication in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
Tran, J. (2010). Child acquisition of Vietnamese classifier phrases. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 3, 111-137.