© 2011 Dr. Catherine Collier All Rights Reserved

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Dr. Collier’s List of When Is SpedLEP Justified Versus When NOT

Sped referral is justified

1. Poor communicative proficiency in the home as compared to siblings and age peers in

bilingual environments, especially when this lack is noticed by the parents.

2. English language development that appears to be significantly different than that of peers

who are also learning English as a additional language.

3. Documentation that student’s acquisition of English is within normal range for his peer

group, age, culture/language population, length of time in ESL, etc. but there are specific

learning and/or behavior problems unrelated to culture shock or language transition.

4. Specific sensory, neurological, organic, motor, or other conditions that impact learning

and behavior when having reliable documentation that culture shock or language

transition contributes but is not the determining factor for the learning and behavior

problems.

5. Social use of language or lack thereof continues to be inappropriate (e.g., topic of lesson is

rocks and the student continues to discuss events that occurred at home without saying

how they relate to rocks).

6. Grammatical structures continue to be inappropriate in both languages even after

extensive instruction (e.g., student cannot produce the past tense in either Spanish or

English indicating difficulty with grammatical tenses).

7. Student is demonstrating limited phrasing and vocabulary in both languages (e.g., her

sentences in both languages demonstrate limited or no use of adjectives and adverbs and

both languages are marked by a short length of utterance).

8. Student’s productions in both languages demonstrate a lack of the possessive form

indicating that she has not acquired this morphologic structure by the appropriate age.

Again, both languages may be marked by a short length of utterance

9. Student’s response to specific structured interventions addressing his presenting problem

is documented to be more than 40% below ELL/CLD peers within individualized

instructional intervention.

10. Student’s response to specific structured interventions addressing her presenting problem

is documented to be unsustainable without substantial individualized specially designed

instruction.

11. Others as documented across at least 6 to 8 weeks of intensive instructional intervention

when having reliable documentation that culture shock or language transition contributes

but is not the determining factor for the learning and behavior problems.

© 2011 Dr. Catherine Collier All Rights Reserved

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Sped referral is not justified

1. Learning and/or behavior problems are attributable to culture shock or language

transition issues, such as silence, unresponsiveness, heightened anxiety, code switching,

response fatigue, confusion in locus of control, etc.

2. Below normal rate of acculturation when documentation that this delay is related to

inadequate or inappropriate instruction or intervention.

3. Leveling out or below normal rate of language acquisition when documentation

that this sustained language ‘ceiling’ is related to inadequate or inappropriate levels of

language instruction (e.g. less than 50 minutes a day in sheltered English or no content

support in the primary language).

4. Social responses to language are based on cultural background (e.g., comfort level in

asking or responding to questions)

5. Pauses between turns or overlaps in conversation are similar to those of peers with the

same linguistic and cultural background.

6. Grammatical errors due to native language influences (e.g., student may omit initial verb

in a question—You like cake? (omission of Do)).

7. Word order in L1 may differ from that of English (e.g., in Arabic, sentences are ordered

verb-subject-object while Urdu sentences are ordered subject-object-verb).

8. A student whose native language is Korean may have difficulty using pronouns, as they

do not exist in her native language. A student may use words from L1 in productions in

L2 because of his inability or unfamiliarity of the vocabulary in L2 (e.g., “The car is muy

rapido.” In this case, the student knows the concept as well as the needed structure but

cannot remember the vocabulary).

9. Native speakers of Russian may not use articles as they do not exist in that language. A

student whose native language is Spanish may omit the possessive (‘s’) when producing

an utterance in English (e.g., “Joe crayon broke” or She will say “the crayon of

Joe broke,” applying a structure that is influenced by the rules of her L1. She still

demonstrates understanding of the morphologic structure for possession but is

demonstrating errors in structure that are directly influenced by her L1.)

10. Student’s response to specific structured interventions addressing his presenting problem

is documented to be within 50% or closer to that of his ELL/CLD peers within

individualized instructional intervention.

11. Student’s response to specific structured interventions addressing her presenting problem

is documented to be sustainable with continuing differentiated learning support with the

instruction and instructional intervention program.

12. Others as documented across at least 6 weeks of intensive instructional intervention when

having reliable documentation that culture shock or language transition is the determining

factor for the learning and behavior problems.