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From:
Date: 06 Oct 2008
Time: 20:42:04 -0500
Remote Name: 75.74.131.143
Tiffany Lin, you wrote: ... if intervention is done in one language and transfer is possible from one to another, the question is which language should be targeted? If the child is more fluent and efficient in Spanish, and weaker in English, should the intervention be focused on spanish? Sometimes we do not have the luxury of a choice. Sometimes the best we can do is to provide treatment in a language that we share with the client, and then look for transfer to other languages the client may speak. I evaluated one adult PWS who spoke English and Polish, and I evaluated and treated another who spoke English, French, and Arabic. For the evaluation of man who spoke English and Polish, I managed to train his bilingual spouse to supply me with information about the client's speech in Polish; and for the English-French-Arabic speaking client, managed to gather information about fluency in Arabic from a questionnaire that I used periodically during treatment. For these clients, I had no way to provide treatment in Polish or Arabic. For my adult subjects, I noted somewhat better transference when treatment was provided in the weaker language. Dr. Yasir Al Natour, a Jordanian colleague, once shared that he had made a similar clinical observation. It would be an interesting research question for a new study. B. Humphrey