The goal of this report was to explore ways to differentiate the performance of early school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children in U.S. public schools, who appear "at-risk" for language impairment versus those who have true risk. We compared the patterns of performance reported for children with typical development and language impairment reported in the literature to those for children with risk described by Bedore et al., (2013) and Perez et al., (in preparation). Children with risk seem quite different than their peers with true language problems on formal measures such as the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA). However these children presented fewer errors or weaknesses in spontaneous speech than did their peers with true language impairment. Language variability and errors are expected in the language of young bilingual children, so it is of utmost importance that language professionals closely assess each of the child's languages with formal and functional measures prior to making a diagnosis of language impairment.

Describes how intellectual development of bilingual children differs from that of monolingual children.

Both SLPs and researchers must understand speech and language developments in children - and SLPs also need reliable assessment and intervention approaches for serving bilingual children with language disorders. This comprehensive text is one of the few to offer readers in-depth theoretical and practical information on these timely topics. brings together more than a dozen top researchers to present developmental data, best assessment practices, and appropriate intervention approaches in the following areas: language processing skills; lexical development; morpho-syntactic development; first language loss; grammatical impairments; semantic development; phonological development and disorders; narrative development and disorders; fluency; language intervention for bilingual speakers. The chapter outlines the major purposes of intervention for bilingual children with speech and language disorders, explores the debate over which language SLPs should use with bilingual children, and examines ways to promote gains in both languages. With this research-based text, SLPs will understand the complexity of language development in bilingual children and learn appropriate assessment and intervention approaches.

This book contains 12 papers contributed by leading scholars in the field of language development, studying variants of the languages which originated on the Iberian peninsula. The contributors examine language development in both typically-developing and language-impaired populations who are learning language in diverse learning conditions, including language contact, as well as monolingual and bilingual Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Euskera. This expansion and diversification of the database for studying language development is important because it creates new opportunities for testing theoretical claims. Our contributors reconsider theoretical claims relating to the purported adult-like nature of young children’s grammars. While some conclude, for example, that children in Mexico possess very adult-like semantic-pragmatic competence in the domain of the pragmatic implicatures associated with existential quantifiers, others conclude that, in particular sociolinguistic registers of Chilean Spanish, children are late to develop adult-like competence in plural marking. Taken together, the contents of the volume illustrate how the linguistic diversity found in the distinct learning conditions in which language develops offers a wealth of opportunities to further our understanding of linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive development.

In the first decade of life, children become bilingual in different language learning environments. Many children start learning two languages from birth (Bilingual First Language Acquisition). In early childhood hitherto monolingual children start hearing a second language through daycare or preschool (Early Second Language Acquisition). Yet other hitherto monolingual children in middle childhood may acquire a second language only after entering school (Second Language Acquisition). This Element explains how these different language learning settings dynamically affect bilingual children's language learning trajectories. All children eventually learn to speak the societal language, but they often do not learn to fluently speak their non-societal language and may even stop speaking it. Children's and families' harmonious bilingualism is threatened if bilingual children do not develop high proficiency in both languages. Educational institutions and parental conversational practices play a pivotal role in supporting harmonious bilingual development.

Bilingual language exposure is highly variable, with wide-ranging influences on early language skills. This underscores the need for understanding what to expect in early language acquisition so that those with typical language development can be differentiated from those who are struggling or at risk, and so requiring early intervention. One of the key ways to look at language development in very young children is to investigate their vocabulary development, and for bilingual children, this means measuring their abilities in both languages. This book takes an important step in this direction: it documents the expressive vocabularies of children aged 16-45 months who were exposed to different language pairs and bilingual contexts, and investigates the risk and protective effects of various environmental factors. In each of the six studies, the vocabularies of typically-developing children were measured using the vocabulary checklist of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and its adaptations to other languages. Developmental and language background questionnaires provided additional information on children’s developmental history, risk factors for language impairment, language exposure, as well as parental education and occupation. This harmonised methodology was designed within COST Action IS0804 (Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment). The outcomes of this cross-linguistic research contribute towards answering theoretical questions regarding early bilingual vocabulary acquisition. They also have clinical relevance, potentially assisting speech-language pathologists and those interested in early language development in distinguishing between clinically significant bilingual delays and the natural consequences of bilingual exposure. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.

Bilingualism in Development describes research on the intellectual development of bilingual children, showing how it is different from that of monolingual children. The focus is on preschool children, examining how they learn language, how they acquire literacy skills, and how they develop problem-solving ability in different domains. It is unique in that it assembles a wide range of research on children's development and interprets it within an analysis of how bilingualism affects that development. It is the only book to interpret this large research from a single theoretical perspective, leading to coherent conclusions.