SDSU Bilingual Development in Context Research Lab

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) face a higher risk of long-lasting problems with reading and academics than children without DLD. These problems can be reduced if DID is diagnosed and treated at an early age using tools in the language that the child speaks. But, for children in Vietnam, that doesn’t exist.

In our summary of Dr. Giang Pham and colleagues’ (2019) article, we highlight the process of identification, how many children were identified, and what our next steps are.

Read the full summary here: https://bdc.sdsu.edu/2026/04/10/the-first-step-towards-diagnosing-dld-in-vietnamese-children/

Find the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-L-18-0305 or contact Dr. Giang Pham ([email protected]) for access.

The BDC Lab had a wonderful time celebrating Lunar New Year!

Thank you to Rosa Parks Elementary School for inviting us once again to their annual Tết celebration. The event brought together families and community members to enjoy cultural music, performances, and food.

We always love learning about and sharing Vietnamese culture and traditions, and we had so much fun during February’s storytime featuring books about Vietnamese culture.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year! Chúc Mừng Năm Mới! 🧧🎊🐴

Spring is here! This semester, the BDC Lab remains actively engaged in our research projects, community outreach, and preparations for upcoming events.

We will continue hosting our monthly Vietnamese Storytime at City Heights Library, Mira Mesa Library, and Rancho Peñasquitos Library. Dates and times are listed in the photo.

The BDC Lab is also making consistent progress across our research projects. The “Assessment Tools for Vietnamese” and “Cognitive Processing in Diverse Learners” projects are expected to complete data collection and conclude data scoring. The Language Sample Transcription and Analysis project will proceed with transcription and begin data analysis.

For additional information about the goals,
progress, and researchers involved in our projects, please visit bdc.sdsu.edu.

The BDC Lab had another wonderful year at the 2025 ASHA Convention in Washington, D.C.! Read more about our presentations below:

🗣️‘Bilingual SLP Perspectives on Incorporating Processing-based Tasks in Language Assessment: Exploring Barriers and Facilitators.’ Dr. Pham, Dr. Ramos, and our colleagues from the Cognitive Processing Project explored bilingual SLP perspectives on the barriers to using processing-based tasks in language assessment and on the facilitators to increase their implementation in clinical and school settings.

🗣️‘Investigating Bilingual Development Through Classifier Use in Vietnamese Stories.’ Linh presented her research on Vietnamese-English bilingual children’s use of Vietnamese classifiers in narratives, highlighting their potential as clinical markers of developmental language disorder (DLD).

🗣️‘How Gold Are These Standards? Revisiting Parent Report and Language Sampling for Bilinguals.’ Dr. Pham, Dr. Ramos, and collaborators, Dr. Peña and Dr. Bedore, investigated methodological decisions for applying diagnostic criteria to a diverse bilingual group (Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking bilingual children), such as group comparisons and agreement between measures.

Congratulations to all our fantastic presenters, collaborators, and RAs 👏

We’re excited to share that the BDC Lab continues strengthening our community ties through meaningful participation in outreach events and hosting bilingual storytimes:

The team joined the Mira Mesa Street Fair on October 4th for a fun day of games and engaging with the local community to share our research and bilingualism!

We will continue our monthly storytime this November! For more information, please visit our website (bdc.sdsu.edu) 📚

The lab is also proud to announce that we will be presenting at the ASHA 2025 convention later this month:

🗣️ Bilingual SLP Perspectives on Incorporating Processing-based Tasks in Language Assessment: Exploring Barriers and Facilitators (Authors: Dr. Kerry Ebert, Dr. Giang Pham, Dr. Quynh Dam, Kristie Gonzalez, Dr. King Yan Kwok, HaeJi Lee, Dr. Michelle Ramos)

🗣️ Investigating Bilingual Development Through Classifier Use in Vietnamese Stories (Authors: Linh Dang, Dr. Giang Pham)

🗣️ How Gold Are These Standards? Revising Parent Report and Language Sampling for Bilinguals (Authors: Dr. Michelle Ramos, Dr. Giang Pham, Dr. Quynh Dam, Dr. Jissel Anaya, Joseph Hin Yan Lam, Dr. Alexander Choi-Tucci, Ngoc Do, Linh Dang, Dr. Elizabeth Peña, Dr. Lisa Bedore)

Congratulations to BDC doctoral students, Tati, Linh, and Ngoc, for presenting at the 29th Annual SDSU-UCSD Joint Doctoral Program Student Colloquium:

⭐Tati presented “English Language Recommendations in Early Intervention Services for Bilingual Families” which analyzed features of English-language recommendations and its associations with provider demographics, using explanatory sequential mixed methods.
⭐Linh presented “Investigating Classifier Use in Bilingual Vietnamese-English Children,” which characterized Vietnamese classifier use and its associated factors in Vietnamese-English bilingual children.
⭐Ngoc presented “Exploring the Potential of NWR Tasks for Assessing DLD in Bilinguals,” which compared nonword repetition performance of monolingual Vietnamese children with and without DLD with typically developing bilingual Vietnamese-English children.

Colloquium is an opportunity for doctoral students to present their first- and second-year projects to program faculty and students. The projects involve data analysis, preparation for publication, and oral presentation.

We are beyond proud of all of their hard work and dedication!

Welcome to the fall semester! This school year brings lots of changes to our outreach efforts and projects.

This fall, we will be hosting our monthly Vietnamese Storytime at THREE libraries: City Heights Library, Mira Mesa Library, and Rancho Peñasquitos Library! Dates and times listed in the photo.

We also continue to make steady progress on our research projects! The “Assessment Tools for Vietnamese” and “Cognitive Processing in Diverse Learners” projects will complete data collection and start to wrap up data scoring. The “Language Sample Transcription and Analysis” project will continue making progress on transcription and begin data analysis.

For more information about the goals, progress, and researchers involved in our Storytime and research projects, visit our website (bdc.sdsu.edu).

We value community here at the BDC lab, and we incorporate that into our work by collaborating with people and organizations who do work that brings resources, services, and knowledge to our neighborhoods.

This summer, we had the honor of hosting lunches with some special guests:
– Phương Liên Palafox (Summitt Elementary)
– Jean-Huy Tran and Minh Tuyen Le Mai (VietVoices)
– Dr. Yến Lê Espiritu (UCSD, Ethnic Studies)
– Hoan Nguyen (UCSD, Linguistics Heritage Language Program for Vietnamese)

We had rich discussions about Vietnamese language and identity through the lens of research and community experiences.

This week, we wanted to highlight some presentations from our lab this past spring semester.

At the Bilingualism Matters Symposium 2025, Ngoc virtually presented her poster “Developing a Vietnamese Structural Priming Task for Bilingual Children” (not pictured). Tati presented her oral talk “Bilingual Narratives: Analyzing Storytelling Abilities Across Languages.”

At the Society for Research in Child Development 2025 Biennial Meeting, Jide presented his poster “Ethnic-racial Identity Development in Vietnamese American Children.” Tati presented her poster “Bilingual Narrative Development: Analyzing Sentences and Stories Within and Across Languages.”

Cheers to all your hard work and the BDC JDP team that helped make it happen!

Congratulations to our 2025 BDC Lab graduates!

🎓Mindy Kim (M.A.)
🎓Mia Mangney (B.A.)
🎓Thi Pham (B.A.)
🎓Fatima Roman (B.A.)
🎓Marisol Desiderio Rodriguez (B.A.)

These students have worked hard and achieved many goals and successes. We wish you the best in your future endeavors and are confident you will succeed wherever you go!

Our Vietnamese Storytime continues at the Mira Mesa and City Heights library! In April, we read “Sly Đừng Khóc” written by Henriette Barkow, illustrated by Richard Johnson, and “Chú Sâu Róm Quá Đói” written by Eric Carle. In May, we read “Con búp bê của mẹ” written by Phan Uyển Nghi.

The BDC Lab hosts Vietnamese Storytime monthly at local libraries to promote Vietnamese language, literacy, and culture. We will continue to host Storytime throughout the Summer. Check out our website to find out when and where our summer Storytimes will be hosted: bdc.sdsu.edu/storytime/