Bilingual/ELL/ESL Speech-Language Evaluations: Difference vs Disorder

NO PREP! DOWNLOAD & SAVE TO REFERENCE! or PRINT & POST on your bulletin board next to your age of mastery for phonemes, ages of elimination for phonological processes, and your school district's eligibility criteria/categorizations/IEP protocols :)

This packet will guide speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who are evaluating bilingual/English Language Learner (ELL) students for Speech-Language Disorders.

These are steps/tips that can be used when evaluating a student who speaks any language, Spanish or otherwise!

The first two flow charts explain steps how to complete a bilingual evaluation - the first flow chart uses detailed language while the second flow chart is more concise, as a quick reference. The third and fourth flowcharts help to differentiate between language differences and language disorders in bilingual/ELL children.

These flow charts were written from the viewpoint of a monolingual SLP so that other SLPs can see how one might perform a bilingual evaluation with an interpreter. However, this flowchart was reported to be very useful to bilingual SLPs in my school district as a checklist and a deep dive into student with more complex language profiles.

These flow charts include ideas embedded with hyperlinks to quickly take you to resources. However, the steps within the document are not rules or regulations that are required to be followed rigidly by any governing agency of public schools or speech-language pathology. The needs of students are determined by the serving SLP. The student may require more or less than what is outlined in this document. However, these flow charts are great spring boards for any SLP to add to her toolkit for evaluating bilingual/ELL students!