Speech sound acquisition in a 5-year-old Spanish-English bilingual child

One of the most challenging aspects of assessing the phonological development of bilingual children is finding a method that is both ecologically valid and normatively informative. This study investigates if spontaneous speech samples from a Spanish- English bilingual child give clinically relevant information that is not typically available through traditional assessment methods. In this single subject case study, the researcher collected spontaneous speech samples from a 5-year-old, Spanish-English bilingual child. The speech samples were transcribed and evaluated to determine relation to established customary ages of production and levels of phonological complexity in both target languages. The results of this study indicate that spontaneous speech samples may be just as effective as elicited speech samples in offering comparisons to customary ages of production and phonological complexity for bilingual children.