Evaluating Phonological Systems of Bilingual (Spanish-English) Children with Highly Unintelligible Speech

Abstract

Several investigators have documented the need for better assessment practices of bilingual children. Based on results reported by Skahan, Watson, and Lof, for example, practicing speechlanguage pathologists (SLPs) shared that they rely more on informal measures or, in some cases, assessment in English only when evaluating children with suspected speech sound disorder (SSD). Given what we know about preferred bilingual assessment procedures, both the native language and second language should be evaluated; which is supported by federal mandates ‘unless it is clearly not feasible to so provide or administer’. More recently, however, some challenges have been posited by speech sound experts in relation to the assessment of english language learners (ELLs) with SSD.