Bilingual children and caseloads in speech and language therapy:a panorama of reported pratices

Abstract

Bilingualism is a phenomenon that is becoming more and more widespread throughout the world and therefore also in the context of speech and language therapy. This is challenging for people working with bilingual children and have to determine whether the difficulties of a bilingual child are due to a lack of exposure to languages or to an actual specific language impairment. Scientific advances in the subject of bilingualism and specific language impairments lead us to think about what is happening in speech and language therapy practice. The goal of our research is to provide an overview of speech and language therapy practices with bilingual children in French-speaking part of Switzerland. Despite the difficulties due to the lack of tools to adequately assess the language skills of bilingual children, the participants of this survey highlight the practice of more ecological methods such as theobservation of children in interaction and interviews with the family.