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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Language Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1532948
This article is part of the Research Topic Multilingual Assessment: Insights from Psycholinguistics and Educational Research View all articles
Developing a language screening scale that considers linguistic diversity in preschool children
Provisionally accepted- 1 University of Central Lancashire, Larnaca, Cyprus
- 2 University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
- 3 Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Limassol, Cyprus
This paper delivers an extensive analysis of the techniques adopted in the creation of a new language assessment instrument, the Screening Scale of Language Development (SSLD), which has been standardized in Cyprus to identify language deviations in children before they enter primary school. The findings of this research highlight how the scale items, which were informed by recent studies on clinical indicators and prognostic factors of developmental language disorders, were crafted to eEectively represent the language varieties utilized by Greek Cypriot preschool children. Apart from addressing the gap in assessment tools that consider the linguistic diversity in Cyprus, the SSLD initiative aimed to establish a tool with strong psychometric foundations that allows professionals to confidently detect language diEiculties. The study also showcases the findings of the psychometric evaluation of the SSLD, which strongly endorses its structural validity, emphasizing its usefulness as a reliable instrument for evaluating language growth in Greek Cypriot children.
Keywords: language screening scale, Linguistic diversity, Preschool children, Cypriot Greek, SSLD
Received: 22 Nov 2024; Accepted: 14 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kanikli, Spanoudis and Theodorou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Antri Kanikli, University of Central Lancashire, Larnaca, Cyprus
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