How to Decode a Bilingual Speech Evaluation Report

You walked out of the school district office with a stapled twelve-page report and a polite handshake. The evaluator used words like expressive delay and atypical phonological processes, and now you’re sitting in your car wondering if your bilingual three-year-old is actually behind, or if the person who tested her had no idea what bilingual development looks like.

I’m a speech-language pathologist, and this is one of the most common situations I see. The report itself is rarely the problem. The problem is that the report is written for other clinicians, and nobody hands you a key. Let’s go through one together so you can read yours.

What the sections actually mean

Every bilingual speech evaluation has roughly the same anatomy. Names vary by district, but the bones don’t. Here’s what each chunk is really telling you.

Background / Case History. This is the intake form summary. Read it carefully — if it gets your child’s language history wrong (says she’s monolingual when she isn’t, or lists only English exposure), the rest of the report is built on bad ground. Common errors: missing Spanish exposure from a grandparent, missing the actual percentage of Spanish input per week, listing the dominant home language incorrectly.

Assessment Tools Used. This section lists the standardized tests. Read it twice. If the evaluator used only English-normed tests (PLS-5, CELF Preschool, GFTA-3 in English), and your child hears 40% Spanish at home, those scores are not valid for diagnosing a disorder. They describe English performance, not language ability. ASHA has been clear on this for over a decade: scoring bilingual children against monolingual norms systematically over-identifies them as language-impaired (ASHA, Bilingual Service Delivery).

Standard Scores and Percentiles. A standard score around 100 is average. Below 78 (about the 7th percentile) usually triggers a “delay” or “disorder” label. But — and this is the part most reports skip — those cutoffs assume the test was normed on children with your child’s language profile. For a Spanish-English bilingual three-year-old, you want to see scores reported separately for each language, or at least a conceptual scoring column (more on that below).

Phonological / Articulation Findings. This is where the report lists which sounds your child does or doesn’t produce. For bilingual kids, the evaluator should be comparing each sound to the typical age of acquisition in that language. Spanish /r/ — the trill — is one of the last sounds to come in, typically not until around 5–6 (ASHA Spanish Phonemic Inventory). English /θ/ (“th”) is also late. A clinician who flags either of those at age 3 is over-calling.

Language Sample Analysis. A good evaluator transcribes a few minutes of your child talking and analyzes the structure. This is usually the most valid piece of the whole report for bilingual kids, because it’s not norm-referenced. Look for mean length of utterance (MLU), number of different words, and whether code-switching is noted as concerning. Code-switching is not a disorder. It is a sign of bilingual competence.

Clinical Impressions and Recommendations. This is the evaluator’s opinion. It’s not the truth. It’s a professional opinion based on the data above. If the data is shaky, the impression is shaky.

Red flags vs. normal bilingual development

Here’s the part that takes years of training to internalize. I’m going to give it to you in one page.

Normal bilingual development that often gets flagged as a delay:

• A smaller vocabulary in each language separately, but a larger total conceptual vocabulary across both. This is the most common false flag in the entire field.
• Code-switching mid-sentence (“Mami, quiero más juice”). This is not confusion. It’s a typical feature of bilingual speech, including in adults.
• A silent period after starting daycare or preschool in a new language — weeks to months, usually under six. Normal. Not regression.
• Different rates of acquisition between the two languages depending on which one the child hears more that month.
• Producing English /r/ in place of Spanish /r/ before age 5. Substitutions across languages are typical.
• Using simpler grammar in the weaker language. Also typical, and not a disorder unless the dominant language also shows the same patterns.

Actual red flags worth taking seriously, in any language:

• Difficulty understanding simple directions in both languages by age 3.
• Limited vocabulary (under ~50 words total across both languages — counted conceptually, not per language) by 24 months.
• No two-word combinations by 24 months, in either language. (That month matters: the clinical marker for late language emergence is fewer than 50 words and no two-word combinations at 24 months — see ASHA, Late Language Emergence. Waiting until 30 months to take it seriously gives away half a year.)
• Persistent difficulty being understood by familiar adults in the dominant language past age 4.
• Significant frustration around communication, regression of skills, or loss of words previously used.
• A family history of speech, language, or learning difficulties.

The key principle: a true language disorder shows up in both languages. If your child is “delayed” only in English but doing fine in Spanish, she isn’t delayed. She’s a bilingual kid with less English exposure. That’s a totally different situation than a child who struggles in her stronger language too.

Conceptual scoring — the term to ask about

This is the single most useful term to know walking into an evaluation. Conceptual scoring means the evaluator counts a word as correct if your child knows the concept in either language. If she points to a dog and says perro, that counts. If she says “dog,” that counts. Either is evidence she has the concept.

Most standardized tests don’t do this by default. ASHA recommends it. Many school districts skip it because it takes extra time. If the report doesn’t mention conceptual scoring and your child was tested in only one language, that’s a fair thing to ask about at the meeting.

How to push back without making it adversarial

You don’t need to argue. You need to ask three specific questions in the meeting. Bring them written down.

1. Was my child tested in both of her languages? If no, ask for a re-evaluation by a bilingual SLP or with the help of a trained interpreter. ASHA’s position statement on this is clear and you can cite it without sounding combative.
2. Were the test norms appropriate for a bilingual learner? If the evaluator used only English-normed tests, those scores should be reported descriptively, not used to qualify or disqualify for services.
3. Did the evaluation include a language sample in both languages? If no, that’s worth requesting. Sample-based analysis is more valid than standardized testing for bilingual kids.

If the answers to all three are “no” and you still got a delay diagnosis, you have grounds to request an Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) in a school district context, or a second opinion in a clinical setting. You are not being difficult. You are doing the part of advocacy that the system relies on parents to do.

What to do if the report is actually correct

Sometimes the report is right, the evaluator is bilingual, the testing was sound, and your child does have a true language disorder. This is also okay. A diagnosis is not a sentence. The most important thing I can tell you in that scenario:

Do not drop the Spanish. This is the single most common piece of bad advice still given to families of bilingual kids with diagnosed disorders, and it has no research support. The data from decades of studies is consistent — children with language disorders learn two languages at the same rate, relative to their baseline, as they would learn one. Taking away Spanish does not improve English. It just takes away Spanish. I’ve written more on this in bilingual development for children with speech and language differences.

If your child qualifies for therapy, ask whether bilingual services are available. They aren’t always, but the question is worth asking, and a good monolingual SLP can still serve a bilingual child if they collaborate with the family.

The short version

A bilingual speech evaluation report is only as good as the bilingual lens it was written through. Most of what gets flagged in young bilingual kids is normal bilingual development viewed through monolingual norms. The fix isn’t to panic or to drop Spanish. It’s to read the report carefully, ask the three questions above, and make sure the team is comparing your child to the right reference group.

If you want a deeper read on what’s typical and what isn’t at each age, our bilingual milestones page walks through ages 2 through 5. And if your child is doing fine and you’re just trying to keep the Spanish growing, the 12-month bilingual curriculum is built to give you structured weekly exposure without adding to your plate.

— Lindsey