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This commentary describes a multi-national project which addresses gaps in the design and delivery of health and education services in Arabic-speaking countries in relation to early language development, with a focus on Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. This includes: (1) co-production with early years professionals and NGOs of approaches to support early language development; (2) development and standardisation of tools to identify monolingual and multilingual Arabic-speaking children at risk of poor language development; and (3) examination of language development in refugee communities. The importance of inter-professional partnership and the inclusion of families in planning support for oral language development is highlighted. Arabic versions of the Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) Toddler were developed, and data collected from 1074 Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian monolingual infants aged 8–30 months. Data from 201 age-matched Palestinian infants in Lebanese refugee camps highlight inequalities resulting from limited maternal educational opportunities. Data from 230 multilingual Lebanese 2-year-olds enable the interpretation of CDI scores as a function of language exposure. This work contributes to the promotion of robust language development for all Arabic-speaking children. This commentary focusses on sustainable development goal (SDG) 3, SDG 4, SDG 10 and SDG 17. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since norms for vocabulary acquisition in Lebanese bilingual children (L1: Lebanese, L2: French and/or English) do not yet exist, clinical assessment based on normative data and using appropriate tools remains difficult for speech and language therapists. The current study focuses on exploring and comparing lexical performances of typically developing Lebanese bilingual children (32 Bi-TD, aged 5;7 to 6;9) and those with specific language impairment (10 Bi-SLI, aged 5;9 to 7;10), using Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT, COST Action IS0804, 2011) in Lebanese Arabic language (CLT-LB), specific to the Lebanese context. The results confirm that typically developing children have better lexical skills, especially expressive skills, than their peers with specific language impairment. Expressive and receptive performance by both groups of children was found to depend on word class (nouns and verbs). Bi-TD children were more accurate at naming and recognising verbs than the Bi-SLI group. The results of these lexical tasks reveal aspects of the nature of bilingual lexical variation, as well as similarities and differences between the Bi-TD and Bi-SLI groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]