The Department of Health has introduced the world's first assessment tool for testing primary school children's oral Cantonese abilities.

The tool - Hong Kong Cantonese Oral Language Assessment Scale - will help identify children with language impairments at an early stage to offer them timely and appropriate assistance.

Launching the tool at a press conference today, Deputy Director of Health Dr TH Leung said a language-assessment tool has been available for pre-school children but not for Cantonese-speaking school children.

Dr Leung said in 2002 the department initiated the development of a reliable tool for assessing a student's overall language ability and for identifying specific impairments.

"The tool will provide accurate assessment of children with language difficulties and identify their specific needs. The earlier the children can receive treatment and support services, the better it will be for their future development," he said.

The Child Assessment Service will use the scale and supply it o qualified speech therapists, including those in the Hospital Authority, Education & Manpower Bureau, non-governmental organisations and private practice, Dr Leung said.

He added parents may consult their doctors or qualified speech therapists to help kids suspected of having language difficulties.

Child Assessment Service consultant Dr Catherine Lam said some primary school children have one or more language impairments, such as articulation problems, inadequate vocabulary, grammatical errors and communication difficulties.

She pointed out the language environment in Hong Kong is more complicated than that in many other parts of the world.

"Local children usually start speaking Cantonese at home and learn modern standard Chinese used in written language after going to school. However, Cantonese as an oral language differs in many ways from the modern standard Chinese used in written language.

"In addition, children have to study English and Putonghua at school under the biliteracy and trilingualism policy. This could pose challenges for some children in learning languages," Dr Lam said.

In September 2002, the department's Child Assessment Service commissioned the City University of Hong Kong's Language Information Sciences Research Centre to begin this 42-month project.

More than 1,100 kindergarten and primary school children were sampled for testing in the course of developing the assessment tool.

The centre's Professor Benjamin T'sou said the scale covers six main areas - Cantonese grammar, expressive nominal vocabulary, lexical semantic relations, word definition, textual comprehension and narrative skills.

He said the scale can assess not only the language abilities of children from pre-primary to primary six levels, it can also identify diverse language impairments.

Two forums for speech therapists and related professionals will be held on March 25 and 26 to help them understand and use the scale. Both the tool and the forums are free of charge.