Multilingualism Assessment Tool Developed by NYU Researchers

Introduction

Defining "bilingual" or "multilingual" lacks a consistent global method, despite over half of the world's population speaking more than one language. This absence creates difficulties in accurately assessing language proficiency and characterizing diverse language backgrounds.

Development and Publication

Researchers at New York University (NYU) have developed a calculator designed to score multilingualism. This tool enables users to determine their level of multilingualism and identify their dominant language. The development of this calculator, based on new formulas, was reported in the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

Esti Blanco-Elorrieta, an assistant professor of psychology and neural science at NYU, and Xuanyi Jessica Chen, an NYU doctoral student, created the formulas. The calculator functions across nearly 50 languages, including American Sign Language, and supports the input of unlisted languages.

Methodology

The formulas integrated into the calculator utilize two primary variables:

• Age of language acquisition across four modalities: listening, reading, speaking, and writing.
• Self-rated language proficiency for listening, reading, speaking, and writing.

The calculator generates a multilingualism score, which indicates an individual's position on a continuum from monolingual to polyglot. Language dominance is calculated separately by assessing the difference in abilities between languages.

Previous research indicates that self-rated language proficiency is an accurate and efficient measure of actual language proficiency. The researchers incorporated statistical controls to mitigate self-rating bias. Additionally, age of language acquisition has been shown to predict language abilities, with earlier acquisition correlating with a higher likelihood of achieving native-like proficiency.

Validation and Application

The measure was validated through testing in two distinct groups: healthy young bilinguals and older bilinguals with language impairments. The results were compared against existing methods that necessitate more extensive language background information. The formulas produced language-dominance results consistent with those from more complex measures, indicating the approach's accuracy and relative simplicity.

This tool provides a quantitative method for characterizing multilingual populations, with potential applications in research, clinical assessments, and language education.

Funding

This research received support from grants provided by the National Institutes of Health (R00DC019973) and the National Science Foundation (2446452).