The BASS started out as a research tool to investigate code switching in Pakistani Heritage children living in the UK.

You can read about the results in my thesis:

Pert, S. (2007). Bilingual language development in Pakistani heritage children in Rochdale UK: Intrasentential codeswitching and the implications for identifying specific language impairment Newcastle University, UK]. http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/2230

And the resulting research paper:

Pert, S., & Letts, C. (2006). Codeswitching in Mirpuri speaking Pakistani heritage preschool children: Bilingual language acquisition. The international journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior, 10(3), 349-374. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069060100030501

The original assessment, 'je zindegi' (this life) was a photograph based resource. To protect the confidentiality of the models, and allow the assessment to be used clinically as well as for research purposes, the assessment picture book was changed to an illustrated version.

This became the first version of BASS, which is available below for Pakistani heritage children living in the UK who speak Mirpuri, Punjabi or Urdu.

Following this, I was approached by other clinicians and researchers wishing to use the framework of the BASS with speakers of other languages.

Adaptations to the illustrations were made to ensure that children recognised the people, clothing, activities and so on, ensuring engagement and as best an expressive language sample as possible.

There are now versions of BASS available for Malayalam, an Indian heritage language, and Spanish, a European language.

If you are interested in adapting the BASS for other speech communities, then please get in touch.

Select from the following languages to download the relevant files which may be shown on a laptop, iPad/Tablet or printed off for clinical assessment: