Where Spanish and English Come Together: A Two Dimensional Bilingual Approach to Clinical Decision Making

An increasing number of United States school children are from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds and speak multiple languages. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are often challenged with differentiating the performance of bilingual children with language impairment from those who may display a language difference. While there is consensus that we should consider both languages of a bilingual child in formal and informal assessments, there is no agreed way to interpret results of testing in both languages. The aim of this article is to propose a framework for conducting and interpreting the results from comprehensive and unbiased evaluations that incorporate language samples, parent and teacher reports, and standardized testing. We will illustrate the use of this bilingual coordinate approach via a pair of case studies.