Objective To examine the accuracy of parent and teacher ratings of children's language skills, to compare their differences, and to analyze the influential factors, so as to deepen the understanding of the characteristics of these two sources of language assessment. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted between September and December 2024 with 280 children aged 3 - 7 years recruited from three kindergartens and one primary school in Nanjing.Primary caregivers and classroom teachers rated the children's vocabulary, speech intelligibility, sentence length, and grammaticality using the Inventory to Assess Language Knowledge-Mandarin (ITALK-M).Children completed the Mandarin Sentence Repetition Task (MSRT) as an objective measure of language skills.Generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) were used for data analysis. Results Children's objective language scores showed significant positive correlations with both parent ratings (rs=0.353,P<0.001) and teacher ratings (rs =0.347,P<0.001).Only teacher ratings demonstrated significant main effects of age (older children were scored higher than younger children, F=10.987, P=0.001) and gender (girls were scored higher than boys, F=6.132, P=0.013), and this gender effect was only found in the younger group (F=4.294, P=0.038), whereas parent ratings did not show these patterns.There was a significant interaction between maternal education and rater (F=6.403, P<0.001).Teachers tended to give higher ratings to children whose mothers had higher education levels, whereas higher ratings of parents were concentrated among children whose mothers had mid-level education (associate or bachelor's degrees).Parent ratings were significantly higher than teacher ratings (F=15.916, P<0.001), particularly in the dimensions of speech intelligibility (t=5.343, P<0.001) and sentence length (t=4.188, P<0.001). Conclusions Both parent and teacher subjective ratings demonstrated accuracy in early language screening. Compared to parents, teachers' ratings were more sensitive to age-related development and gender difference, and the gender effect diminished as children grew older. Parents may overestimate children's language skills, especially those with mid-level education levels.
Key words
parent /
teachers /
language assessment /
accuracy /
differences
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