McNair Scholar 2024 - Ashley Ynglada
Ashley Ynglada is a junior at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, majoring in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences. Her research interests revolve around Spanish-English bilingual children and developing better ways to assess and treat children with developmental language disorders. She plans to attend graduate school for a master’s degree in speech and language pathology.
Quote from Ashley Ynglada
My dream is to become a bilingual speech-language pathologist and assist children as they overcome the challenges of becoming familiar with a new language.
Research project
Abstract
The language development of bilingual children is complex and as such, more research and data is required to discover patterns. The purpose of this current study is to examine grammatical patterns of Spanish-English bilingual children through language samples to better understand their development. For this study, narrative language samples in Spanish from 30 children ages 5 to 7 were transcribed and coded. The coding focused on correct and incorrect instances of grammatical forms that have varying degrees of “difficulty” in bilingual children’s language development, such as the preterite, plural nouns and articles, and prepositions. After coding was completed, the frequency and the accuracy of the grammatical forms were analyzed. We also analyzed patterns based on home exposure and age. The findings of this study serve to contribute information on grammatical patterns of developing bilingual children.
Faculty mentor
Kerry Danahy Ebert, PhD, CCC-SLP is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on cognitive skills in children with developmental language disorder, their connection with language, and related clinical implications. She is currently leading two NIH-funded projects related to language assessment and language disorders in bilingual children. Dr. Ebert serves as an Editor for the American Journal of Speech-Language-Pathology and is a Fellow of the American-Speech-Language Hearing Association.