The Spanish-english
Bilingual SLP
Step 1: Let's Gather Some Data!
The first procedure for best practice in pediatric evaluations is to gather developmental, medical, and socio-cultural background information. In this crucial step, we interview parents and teachers to collect all the background information the children. While you do this, you need to remember to gather information about:
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Parents concerns and perceptions of child's abilities and weaknesses
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Birth and medical history
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Developmental and motor milestones
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Family history of speech/language or academic deficits
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Family composition and recent changes
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Parents' educational level, occupation, immigration history, and language use
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Child's language background and use
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Academic performance and skills
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Child's behaviors and social skills
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You can also find different tools and questionnaires for this step below.
To find more detailed information about gathering data you can also click here .
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The Alberta Language and Development Questionnaire (ALDeQ; Paradis, J., Emmerzael, K., & Sorenson Duncan, T. (2010)
This questionnaire was designed to obtain information about the children's language development and language environment, in both their first and second language. Paradis, Emmerzael, Sorenson (2010) found that this assessment is useful to obtain information in a bilingual's first language and that if used together with other assessment tools it's a valuable tool to accurately identify language impairment and differentiate from language differences. The study showed that the ALDeQ total scores were a significant discriminator between the typically developing and language impaired group, with better specificity than sensitivity. To read more about this tool and have specific knowledge on how it can be used to assist in identifying English language learners with language impairment you can access the article cited below.
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Paradis, J., Emmerzael, K., & Duncan, T. S. (2010). Assessment of English language learners: using parent report on first language development. Journal of Communication Disorders, 43(6), 474–497. doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2010.01.002
*This questionnaire is only available in English.
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The Critical Questions Handout (Catherine Crowley, Teachers College Columbia University, 2014)
Catherine Crowley designed this questionnaire during her years of experience. She was able to identify questions that she found to be more effective and most valuable information to distinguish language difference from a disorder, especially in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. In this questionnaire, there's one set of questions for parents and one set of questions for teachers. Crowley states that the clinicians must personally administer these questions before seeing the student in order to clarify, expand, and collect essential data. With this information prior to the evaluation, the clinician will be able to know about the child's language acquisitional history and what to expect in the evaluation. With previous information about the child's dialect, language, vocabulary, and prior experiences, the clinician will also be able to plan the assessment according to the child's needs.
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*This questionnaire is available in English and Spanish.
