American Journal of Audiology Vol.20 19-32 June 2011. doi:10.1044/1059-0889(2011/10-0013)
© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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How "Proficient" Is Proficient? Subjective Proficiency as a Predictor of Bilingual Listeners' Recognition of English Words

Lu-Feng Shia

a Long Island University—Brooklyn Campus, Brooklyn, NY

Correspondence to Lu-Feng Shi: lu.shi{at}liu.edu

Purpose: English proficiency must be considered when a bilingual individual is to be evaluated clinically with English speech material. This study describes the minimum level of self-reported English proficiency that identifies bilingual individuals who may perform on par with monolingual listeners on an English word recognition test.

Method: A total of 125 normal hearing bilingual listeners rated their English proficiency in listening, speaking, and reading on an 11-point scale. Other related linguistic variables were also obtained. A randomly selected Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 (NU-6) list (50 English monosyllabic words) was presented to all participants at 45 dB HL in quiet.

Results: Over 90% of the listeners self-rated to have at least "good" proficiency in English listening, speaking, or reading. Of these participants, more than 30% did not achieve a monolingual normative level in English as delimited by binomial distribution. Composite proficiency ratings across language domains better predicted word recognition performance than self-ratings for listening proficiency only. Combining language dominance and age of English acquisition with proficiency ratings further improved prediction specificity.

Conclusions: Self-rated English proficiency can predict bilingual listeners' performance on the NU-6 test. For desirable sensitivity and specificity in predicting monolingual-like performance, a minimum rating of 8 out of 10 across all language domains is recommended.

Key Words: bilingual word recognition, language proficiency, self-rating, sensitivity and specificity


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