Bilingual assessment: Can overall proficiency be estimated from separate measurement of two languages?

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

It is generally recommended that bilingual children be assessed in both of their languages. However, specific procedures for such bilingual assessment and for interpretation of the results are lacking. Normally developing French – English bilingual preschool-age children were compared to monolingual children (n = 28) on expressive and receptive measures of vocabulary and syntax. Results indicated that when measured in one language only, as well as when measured by combination measures such as conceptual vocabulary, which attempt to include both languages, bilingual children may score significantly lower than monolingual peers in various aspects of language. However, the extent of the difference may depend on a number of factors, including amount of bilingual exposure, relative proficiency in the two languages, as well as language specific factors, or the specific language combination being learned by the children.