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.