Oral language abilities in French-speaking children from highly multicultural and low socio-economic status environments

Children from a low SES environment may exhibit reduced language performance as a function of family or environmental socioeconomic status (SES) and this can impact oral language assessment and further development, as well as learning trajectories in school. We aimed to establish whether children in a multicultural and low socio-economic environment would show this disadvantage on normed tasks for oral language development in early grades. An oral language screener (Phophlo), a verb production task, and a metalinguistic task were used to screen 48 children in schools from two highly multicultural French schools with varying levels of SES environments. Scores on the tasks were lower than expected, with failure rates between 15% and 65%, depending on the task. SES did not systematically impact results, and percentage of exposure to French was found to impact some task results significantly. Children in schools with lower SES may have oral language delays as compared to children in schools from middle SES districts. These delays can be identified using the Phophlo screener, verb production and meta-linguistic tasks. Recommendations are made for class-based interventions.