Translation to practice: Creating sampling tools to assess multilingual children's speech

Although speech sampling tools are available in a range of languages (see McLeod, Chapter 13), speech-language pathologists (SLPs) around the world often rely on English or informal assessment tools when working with multilingual children (McLeod, 2007; Skahan et al., 2007). For example, when considering assessment of Samoan children, Ballard and Faro (2008: 379) wrote: 'As information about different cultures and languages is limited, few practitioners have the multicultural assessment skills or resources necessary to make such a judgment or a culturally appropriate assessment'. When speech assessments are not available, sampling tools are often created by SLPs themselves. There are at least four situations that may necessitate the creation of speech sampling tools: when no assessment tools have been developed for a particular language (e.g. when working with children from a developing nation); when working with children who speak non-dominant languages (e.g. Stow & Pert, 1998); when assessment tools are available in a particular language, but are difficult to access (e.g. PAL (1995) can be purchased after attending a training workshop in Greece); or when available sampling tools are not appropriate for use in the SLPs' context (e.g. the words are irrelevant for a particular dialect or the accompanying images are culturally inappropriate/insensitive). This chapter provides advice regarding the creation of sampling tools to assess multilingual children's speech.