CHESL Centre

(Child English as a Second Language Resource Centre)  

The CHESL Centre is the outcome of a research program designed to compile resources to assist clinicians and educators in assessing the language development of children learning English as a second language. These resources consist primarily of information on ESL children’s oral language skills during their first 3 years of learning English in a preschool or school classroom. Children’s language performance was measured through standardized language tests, narrative language samples, and parent questionnaires. This website includes:

  • overview of the research project
  • background information on the group of ESL children who participated
  • instructions on how to do narrative sampling
  • downloadable questionnaires and instructions on how to use them
  • combinations of tests/measures most effective for identifying language impairment among ESL children
  • on-line calculators that assess the probability that an individual ESL child has language impairment
  • FAQs about bilingualism, ESL development, and assessment
  • additional resources such as recommended readings and links


Contact us:

Johanne Paradis, Department of Linguistics

johanne.paradis@ualberta.ca

 

Phyllis Schneider, Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology

phyllis.schneider@ualberta.ca

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the student assistants in the Language Acquisition Lab whose hard work and dedication made this project possible: Kyla Coole, Kristyn Emmerzael, Farzaneh Foroodi-Nejad, Ruiting Jia, Katryna Lysay, Dorothy Pinto, Tamara Sorenson Duncan, Emily Yiu, and Tatiana Zdorenko.

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Research for the CHESL Centre was supported with funds from Alberta Innovates Health Solutions (formerly the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research), the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research, the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Special thanks to the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative (Edmonton), Edmonton Public School Board, Toronto Catholic District School Board for their assistance with recruiting families.