Standardising communication assessment for bilingual children
In English-speaking populations, approximately 10 % of children (with no other developmental problems) have difficulties acquiring speech and/or language skills by the time they begin school. In order to provide relevant therapy approaches in these cases, assessments are required that can identify these children. No standardised assessment exists in the Maltese language, and no data are available for the country’s strongly bilingual and even multilingual population. The 'Communication disorders in the Maltese child population' (CDMCP) project sought to develop and standardise speech and language assessments for identification of both monolingual and bilingual Maltese children with related impairments. The EU-funded project’s partners collected pertinent data and analysed language samples as well as results of already existing speech tests. Interesting observations were made regarding language use in bilingual populations, and an examination of developmental norms provided further insight into the question of whether language status affects speech and language development. Study results indicated that being bilingual does affect the first but not the latter. Manuals were written for speech and language assessment, and these included standardisation as well as qualitative developmental information. The assessments, processed for production, will help therapists in Malta to identify, using Maltese and/or English, speech and language impairments in school-age children. The project thus succeeded in pioneering the first such truly bilingual test, which can be used as a blueprint and applied to other populations and languages.