CDIs
Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) are tools for measuring vocabulary size and growth. These vocabulary 'checklists' have a long history in the study of language development.
This checklist of words is a tool for assessing the development of receptive and productive vocabulary through parental report. We typically use it with children aged from about 8 to 30 months.
It contains 100 standard words, for which both comprehension and production are assessed. It is available in 17 dialects of Arabic, and each version can be downloaded. Alternatively, you can fill the form online and it will calculate for you the comprehension and production scores, which you can then compare to the norms displayed below.
Go to the online Arabic CDI
Previous Studies
On this site you will find the norms that have been calculated from a sample of 436 Egyptian children. We have established that the data from another 168 children from the remaining 16 countries fit the Egyptian vocabulary model, so we can tentatively assume that the Egyptian norms can be used for a child raised in one of the other remaining 16 countries.
The graphs below show how the number of words produced and understood by children changes as a function of children's age.
The list of the available Arabic dialects is:
- Egyptian
- Saudi
- Moroccan
- Iraqi
- Syrian
- Palestinian
- Tunisian
- Algerian
- Libyan
- Omani
- Yemeni
- Qatari
- Emirates
- Jordanian
- Lebanese
- Sudanese
- Bahraini
If you use the Arabic CDI, please cite:
Publication PDF