Test for French Sign Language
The Test de Langue des Signes Française (TELSF), developed at the University of Geneva
(Laboratoire de Psycholinguistique Expérimentale) and the Centre pour Enfants
Sourds de Montbrillant (Geneva) (Niederberger et al., 2001), is an adaptation
of the Prinz, Strong, and Kuntze’s Test of ASL (TASL; Prinz et al., 1994).
The
purpose of the TELSF project was to create the first assessment tool available
in LSF for the bilingual schools of the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
Later, the data collected were used to replicate Strong and Prinz studies
(Strong & Prinz, 1997; 2000) in another cultural and linguistic context
(Niederberger, 2001) and are currently analysed in crosslinguistic sign
languages studies.
As the
original test in ASL, the TELSF provides an in-depth investigation of specific
linguistic structures (morphosyntax and discourse) and, thus, does not provide
a wide screening for deaf children.
Since the French-speaking part of Switzerland has a very small deaf population, the TELSF has been used with only 39 deaf students from three bilingual schools (LSF and French), aged 8 to 17, representing almost all the severe and profoundly deaf students available. Students with major handicaps were not included, as well as those who had their first contact with a native LSF signer after the age of 5. Only few of the children (8) had contact with a native LSF signer from birth.
Similar to
the TASL, the TELSF consists of two production and four comprehension measures.
Most of the material used is the same in both tests.
Production measures
(1)
Classifier Production Test: A five
minute cartoon movie was shown to the students and then presented again in ten
segments. The students were asked to sign each segment in LSF and were videotaped.
The number and types of classifiers were later scored by the Deaf collaborators
of the team. The first third of protocols was scored separately by three
fluent signers and then discussed. The rest was scored by one (same) fluent
signer involved in the process since the beginning.
(2)
Sign Narrative Production Test: A
children’s book without text was given to the students. They were asked to sign
the story in LSF. The students were videotaped and later scored using a
checklist for the presence of LSF grammatical and narrative structures by the
Deaf collaborators of the team. The first third of protocols was scored
separately by three fluent signers and then discussed. The rest was scored by
one (same) fluent signer involved in process since the beginning.
Comprehension measures
(1)
Story Comprehension Test: A LSF narrative was
signed by a near-native Deaf signer and shown on video. While watching the
video, the students were asked questions in LSF about the content, and their
answers were videotaped.
(2)
Classifier Comprehension Test: Pictures
with objects of a variety of features were shown to the students. They saw on
video a Deaf person describing each object in four different ways, using
correct, inappropriate or pseudo-classifiers. The students had to choose the
only correct LSF description, between the four, presented as frozen pictures
from the videotapes on a laptop screen.
(3)
Space Marker Test: A description in LSF was given of
objects located in given environments, e.g. vehicles at a crossroads or
furniture in a bedroom. For each description, the students had to select the
correct representation from a selection of photographs on a laptop screen.
(4)
Time Marker Test: LSF sentences including time marker were
shown on video. On a calendar-like answer sheet, the students needed to find
corresponding dates/time period.
The TELSF
is an adaptation into LSF (French Sign Language) of the Test of ASL. The
English glosses of the TASL were translated in French and the team, including
researchers and students in psycholinguistics, Deaf teachers, LSF/French
interpreters and language therapists, created a pilot version. This pilot was
tested on 4 children and 11 adults and reviewed carefully. A new version was
created taking into account the outputs from the pilot and the feedback of the
Deaf teachers of the four main bilingual programs in the French-speaking part
of Switzerland.
Changes compared to the original ASL version
Material:
the score sheets were replaced for two sub-tests by scoring automatically
the students answers a laptop.
Linguistic
adaptation: the scoring needed to be adapted to be relevant for the LSF
linguistic description.
Cultural
adaptation: some details of the content needed to be changed to make the
situations presented familiar to the students (e.g. in the signed narrative,
which is very similar in both signed languages, the name of the drinks and the
type of game were changed).
Psychometric
analyses of the TELSF showed that the reliability calculated with the alpha of
Kroenbach is satisfactory for most of the subtests. In addition, the scores of
the students globally match the observations made in the classroom by the LSF
teachers.
The TELSF
takes approximately 70 minutes to administer and 150 minutes to score per
student.
The test is now available to all professionals. Requests should be sent to Ulrich Frauenfelder, University of Geneva.
Among the strengths of the
TASL are that (1) Deaf experts were involved all along the process of the
adaptation, the testing and the scoring (2) it is an unique collaboration in
Geneva between two institutions combining academic and practical experience to
provide an assessment tool for the schools and new data for the research field
of LSF acquisition.
Among the weaknesses of the
TASL are that (1) scoring is slow and requires training (2) no report on the
results or the psychometric testing exists in the published literature yet and
(3) it focuses only on the older age ranges (8 to 17).