Bilingual assessment practices: challenges faced by speech-language pathologists working with a predominantly bilingual population

ABSTRACT

The oral language assessment of bilingual children is challenging. The assessment practices and challenges faced by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in countries where bilingualism is the norm have not been well investigated. This paper summarizes what is known about recommended bilingual assessment measures and their limitations. This leads to the investigation of the assessment measures used and challenges faced by SLPs working in Singapore, an English speaking and predominantly bilingual country. SLPs working with children in Singapore were invited to participate in an online survey that centerd on the themes of assessment practices and challenges via email invitations. A total of 26 responses were analysed. Results indicated that although the majority of the SLPs were bilingual, they too faced many challenges in assessing bilingual children’s language skills. The lack of appropriate local assessment tools, data on the developmental trajectories of local languages and, the lack of practice guidelines on bilingual assessment and alternative measures have resulted in SLPs using standardized assessments that were not designed for use with the population. Despite recommendations from the literature, there was also inadequate use of alternative assessment measures. Given the diversity of bilingual children’s language background and development, alternative assessments should be further explored to evaluate their skills rather than further efforts to modify or re-norm current validated standardized assessments.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual
• language assessment
• alternative assessment
• standardized assessment
• Singapore
• assessment challenges

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Speech and Language Therapy Singapore (SALTS) for assistance in publicizing the survey to its members, and the SLPs who took time from their busy caseloads to participate.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Wei Qin Teoh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8099-8397

Chris Brebner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8571-6061

Sue McAllister http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1597-0563

Notes

1 In this paper, the term bilingual also refers to the term multilingual. The term bilingual refers to a person who has been exposed to two or more languages at home, school and in the community; and is able to understand and speak two or more languages in everyday conversations.

2 Proficiently: Able to use the language fluently and accurately in all social and formal contexts

3 Functionally: Able to use the language with sufficient fluency and accuracy in most formal and social contexts