Bilingual speech assessment for Maltese children

Abstract

This chapter highlights a major pitfall in clinical assessment internationally whereby bilingual children are often evaluated and diagnosed with speech disorders using protocols standardized on monolingual, largely English-speaking populations. By reporting on the phonological development of 241 bilingual Maltese-English speaking children aged between 2;0 and 6;0, this study introduces a novel approach to an existing speech assessment tool for Maltese, i.e. the MESA: for all of the items investigated in the study, children respond in each language, thus reflecting the bilingual nature of the assessment in this population. The study expands previous methodological practices by including a subtest that assesses complex phonotactics such as those found in Maltese phonology. Results differentiate between articulatory ability and the effect of abstract phonological knowledge as this is evidenced in phonological processes. The methodology used and findings in this chapter provide clinicians with a better defined outlook on how to address divergence in typical development, speech protraction and speech deviation when assessing Maltese children.