Blanca Schaefer

• PhD
• Speech and Language Therapist at Wissen:schafft Sprache - freie Logopädin (freelance SLT)

Objective: There is a need to provide bilingual assessments and reference data to identify those who struggle to acquire their home language (L1) or the language spoken in the country of residence (L2). However, bilingual assessments and data are still sparse. Therefore, the aim was to use a tablet application to screen receptive vocabulary in diff...

This study reports on the developmental patterns of /ʃC/ clusters in 145 normally developing monolingual German-speaking children between 2;00 and 2;11. All children completed a picture naming task to allow a systematic qualitative analysis of the production patterns. Children’s reductions of target /ʃC/clusters are examined and are evaluated with...

Objective The aim was to explore PA skills German-speaking preschool children with cochlea implants (CIs) and how these skills may be related to their speech and language skills. Methods Three monolingual German-speaking pre-school children aged 5;04 – 6;01 with bilateral CIs were tested. Their cognitive, speech and language skills were assessed....

Many children learning English as an additional language (EAL) show reading comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding. However, the relationship between early language and reading comprehension in this group is not fully understood. The language and literacy skills of 80 children learning English from diverse language backgrounds and 80...

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to explore cluster acquisition in typically developing German-speaking 2-year-olds. METHOD: Data from four cross-sectional studies (n = 145, aged 2;00-2;11) and one eight-month longitudinal study were analysed (n = 6, aged 2;01-2;04). Two different percentages of consonant clusters correct were calculated to allow...

Purpose: There is strong empirical evidence that English-speaking children with spoken language difficulties (SLD) often have phonological awareness (PA) deficits. The aim of this study was to explore longitudinally if this is also true of pre-school children speaking German, a language that makes extensive use of derivational morphemes which may...

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore cluster acquisition in typically developing German-speaking 2-year-olds. Method: Data from four cross-sectional studies (n = 145, aged 2;00-2;11) and one eight-month longitudinal study were analysed (n = 6, aged 2;01-2;04). Two different percentages of consonant clusters correct were calculated to al...

For professionals working with multi-lingual children, detecting language deficits in a child’s home language can present a challenge. This is largely due to the scarcity of standardised assessments in many children’s home languages and missing normative data on multilingual language acquisition. A common approach is to translate existing English l...

For professionals working with multi-lingual children, detecting language deficits in a child’s home language can present a challenge. This is largely due to the scarcity of standardised assessments in many children’s home languages and missing normative data on multilingual language acquisition. A common approach is to translate existing English l...

Objectives: The aim was to explore whether word initial onset awareness is acquired before phoneme awareness and whether onset complexity influences performance on identification tasks. In addition, the relationship between onset and phoneme awareness and letter knowledge was investigated. Method: In this study 22 monolingual German-speaking presc...

Hintergrund: Die phonologische Bewusstheit (PhB) ist eine wichtige metalinguistische Kompetenz, die eng mit der Sprachentwicklung zusammenhängt. Allerdings gibt es bisher nur wenige Daten, die die PhB im frühen Vorschulalter beschreiben. Methodik: Es wurden 33 monolingual deutschsprachige Kinder im Alter von 3;6–3;11 Jahren mit verschiedenen PhB–A...

Background: Phonological awareness (PA) is an important metalinguistic skill which is closely linked to language acquisition. The aim of the study was therefore to assess PA in 3-year-old children. Method: 33 monolingual German-speaking children aged 3;6 – 3;11 were assessed. Different syllable- and onset-rhyme-tasks were administered. Results: I...

Phonological awareness in children provided with cochlear implants

Several studies in recent years have indicated a link between socio-economic status (SES) of families and children's language development, including studies that have measured children's language through formal standardized test procedures. High numbers of children with low performance have been found in lower socio-economic groups in some studies....

This article describes the development of new scales for assessing the status of a young child’s language comprehension and production. Items and sections on the scales were included to reflect advances in research on language acquisition and impairment. The New Reynell Developmental Language Scales (NRDLS) were trialled on 301 children and then st...

The development of phonological awareness (PA), the ability to reflect on the sound structure of words independent of their meaning, has been extensively explored in English-speaking children. However, this is not the case for other languages. The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive PA test battery for German-speaking preschool childre...

Während der frühen Ausspracheentwicklung zeigen Kinder inkonsequente Wortproduktionen. Grunwell [1] beschreibt diese Variabilität von Wortformen als verschiedene Realisationen ein und desselben Zielwortes der Erwachsenensprache. Dieses Phänomen muss im frühen Lebensalter als physiologisch angesehen werden, ist aber, wenn es persisiert, ein Kernsymp...

During early speech development children show inconsistent word productions. Grunwell [1] describes this variability as different realizations of one target word. It is suggested that this is due to holistic awareness and initial phonological representation during early word acquisition. Due to vocabulary growth and general speech and language deve...