The Hong Kong Cantonese Oral Language Assessment Scale (HKCOLAS) In March 2006, Department of Health (DH) launched the first ever assessment tool for testing the Cantonese oral language abilities of school-age children in the world. The tool – Hong Kong Cantonese Oral Language Assessment Scale (HKCOLAS) – helps confirm the diagnosis of language impairments in children so that timely and appropriate assistance could be offered to them, and adverse influence minimized. This will help reduce the burden to teachers and the community in the long run. The instrument has been developed over a period of three and a half years through the pooling of human and fiscal resources of the Child Assessment Service (CAS) of DH and the Language Information Sciences Research Centre (LISRC) of the City University of Hong Kong, and on the basis of rigorous research into the language characteristics of Hong Kong children from age 5 to 12. The test was standardized and normed on 1,120 students of this age range. The instrument covers the assessment of children's comprehension and expressive abilities in areas of lexis, grammar, discourse, and semantics. It has been developed based on current understanding of Cantonese linguistics and language development in children, and in accordance with established practices in test construction, including extensive norming processes. The composite test of HKCOLAS is comprised of six subtests, namely Test of Hong Kong Cantonese Grammar, Textual Comprehension Test, Word Definition Test, Lexical-Semantic Relations Test, Narrative Test and Expressive Nominal Vocabulary Test. Additional tests of Nonword Repetition are also included to assess children's processing abilities. The target age group of the HKCOLAS is from 5 to 12 and the administration time of the test ranges from 60 to 90 minutes. The HKCOLAS is used by speech therapists of Hong Kong . It has been supplied by DH to qualified speech therapists in Hong Kong free of charge. Over the past few years, CAS and LISRC have jointly launched three Seminars and Workshops for qualified speech therapists to help them understand and use HKCOLAS. Over 350 speech therapists have participated in these Seminars and Workshops. Starting from 2008/09, training on the administration of HKCOLAS has been provided by the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences of The University of Hong Kong. DH's Press Release in launching the HKCOLAS in March 2006. The Hong Kong Cantonese Articulation Test (HKCAT) The trial version of the Hong Kong Cantonese Articulation Test (HKCAT) was first distributed in 2002 to qualified speech therapists in assessing articulation problems of Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. The test was then reviewed. The standardized version of HKCAT was normed on 1,726 children, aged 2 years 4 months to 11 years 7 months, and 112 adults. It was published in 2006 at the same time as HKCOLAS. Distribution of HKCOLAS and HKCAT Qualified speech therapists who have attended the seminar and training workshop on HKCOLAS and HKCAT can obtain one set each of these instruments free of charge. Such seminar and training workshop are organized by the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences of The University of Hong Kong. For enquiry on the schedule, please contact 2859 0599. Publications and Conference Presentations on HKCOLAS and HKCAT To, C., Stokes, S., Cheung, H-T. & T'sou, B. (in press). Narrative Assessment for Cantonese-speaking children. Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools. To, C. K.-S., Cheung, H. T., & T'sou, B. (2008). Validity and reliability of three syntactic complexity measures in narratives produced by Cantonese-speaking children. Paper presented in the 12th Congress of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, Istanbul , Turkey .   To, C., Cheung, H-T & T'sou, B. K. (2007). Sensitivity & specificity of Hong Kong Cantonese Oral Language Assessment Scales. Paper presented at the Child Language Seminar, Reading , UK .   Man, Y. To, C., Cheung, H-T & T'sou, B. K. (2007). Development of word definition skills in Cantonese-speaking children. Paper presented at the Symposium on Child Language Disorders. Madison , US .   To, C., Cheung, H-T & T'sou, B. K. (2007). Hong Kong Cantonese Oral Language Assessment Scale: A further validation study. Paper presented at the First International China Conference on Speech Therapy, Beijing , China .   To, C., T'sou, B. K., Mok, K., & Man, Y. (2006). Acquisition of 4-character idioms in Cantonese-speaking children. Paper presented at the Language Acquisition in Chinese Context Conference, Hong Kong , China .   To, C., T'sou, B. K., Lee, T. & Tung, P. (2006). Development of Narrative Skills in Cantonese-speaking Children. Paper presented at the 11th Meeting of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association. Dubrovnik , Croatia .