Dynamic assessment is recommended as an alternative to standardised assessment.

Dynamic assessment has long been used with bilingual / LOTE children and is now also recommended for children and young people with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

Highly recommended master class by Dr Elizabeth Peña, hosted by ASHA.

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs) are parent report instruments which capture important information about children's developing abilities in early language, including vocabulary comprehension, production, gestures, and grammar.

Bilingual Assessment of Simple Sentences
An expressive language screening assessment of early sentence production for children with a Pakistani heritage background speaking Mirpuri, Punjabi or Urdu as a home language in the UK. This is a FREE download for all members of the Royal college of Speech and Language Therapists. Member log-in required. Speech and Language Therapy Students studying in the UK are eligible for free RCSLT membership.

Almost no standardised assessments developed for English-speaking monolingual children and young people are available in Languages Other Than English (LOTE).

This is because there are significant differences between how languages encode concepts and how the surface form of a particular language operates. There are also significant cultural differences which may inadvertently disadvantage children. Many languages have gender encoding and a complex case system. Even translating simple sentences such as 'waving',, 'jumping' etc. may involve changes in the number of words, the phrase order and cultural issues.

For this reason, formal assessments cannot be used in an unmodified form. Picture and toy test materials must be checked and changed to match the community experience, and instructions modified to achieve a similar level of complexity (or simplicity) taking into account the language structure (lexical item selection, syntax, grammar and morphology).

The kit discusses these issues and offers guidance on adapting the NRDLS for a speaker of a LOTE.

Please note that the first edition (Card/Paper) is now out of print.

A PDF version (revised and updated) is available - click the button below.

Bilingual Speech Sound Screen (BiSSS)
Revised and expanded edition. BiSSS is an assessment of speech for young children with suspected speech disorder. The assessment comprises of a comprehensive manual, colour picture book, recording and analysis form, and consonants correct analysis form. £25.00 for a PDF printable copy - all proceeds to the LGBT Foundation's Trans Programme.

The Intelligibility in Context Scale is a quick parent report measure of children's intelligibility, developed to provide speech-language pathologists with information relating to speech sound disorders.

The owners of this web site do not recommend any assessment, therapy package, book or publication, nor will they accept responsibility for the accuracy or otherwise of the information provided.