Resumen de Designing a Normed Receptive Vocabulary Test for Bilingual Populations: A Model from Welsh

Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Enlli Môn Thomas, Emma K. Hughes

• The purpose of this paper is to propose an applied model for the assessment of bilingual children's language abilities with standardised tests. We discuss the purposes of such tests, especially in relation to vocabulary knowledge, and potential applications of test results for each of those purposes. The specific case to be examined here is that of Welsh vocabulary, but the principles are relevant to any other bilingual population and any other aspect of language. Our proposal is that all standardised language tests for bilinguals should take into account children's exposure to the language in question and should report both a general score comparing a given child to all children – bilingual or monolingual – and a score that indicates the child's placement relative to (bilingual) children who have similar language exposure profiles.