“A bilingual SLP or an SLP who is bilingual” – what’s the difference?

Dr. Liz Peña, a speech-language scientist who has dedicated her career to supporting SLPs in order to distinguish typical bilingual language development from DLD, was the original person who asked “A bilingual SLP or an SLP who is bilingual?” on her blog (see link below).

I’m diving into this topic today to share resources and to share my views on the difference between a clinical provider with training and clinical experience to provide bilingual service delivery and a clinical provider who speaks another language beside English. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association is now using the term Multilingual Service Provider (MSP) and has resources to shed light on what it takes to be an MSP in their estimation. Their most recent data on MSPs comes from 2023.

Starting with the checklist they have published on the Practice Portal on Multilingual Service Delivery, the two items I would like to highlight are the following:

• Make clinical judgments about intent/meaning, quality, and/or quantity of client responses provided in the language used.
• Recognize dialectal or regional variations, distinct features of the client’s linguistic community, and/or speech-language errors presented across clinical interactions.

In addition to understanding dialectal variation, multilingual language acquisition, and expected patterns of communication within dialects, having an awareness of cultural considerations, power dynamics, and implicit bias (for reflecting on one’s own prejudices) is crucial. This is highlighted under “Roles and Responsibilities” on the ASHA Practice Portal, in the section “Be Culturally Responsive.” To begin this process about learning about cultural responsiveness, one of the most essential pages on the ASHA Practice Portal is this one.

Ad Hoc Committee on Bilingual Service Delivery (October 2023)

A committee consisting of leading bilingual/multilingual service providers crafted a report in October 2023, where they suggested changes for ASHA as well as identified competencies for MSPs. The 18 competencies are highlighted below:

• Engage in culturally responsive and critical reflective practice.
• Advocate for consumers, families, and communities in the areas of communication, cognition, hearing, swallowing, and balance.
• Consider the effect of the intersection of language and culture on the communication of the client/patient/student.
• Develop effective collaborative relationships with interpreters, translators, and cultural brokers.
• Establish foundational knowledge of speech and language features and processes of various languages to inform clinical practice.
• Provide evidence-based intervention that supports the language(s) and communication modalities of the client/patent/student.
• Consider the use and limitations of technologies that are designed to assist communication across languages.
• Develop foundational knowledge in multilingualism.
• Discuss code-switching and code-mixing as rule-governed language.
• Explain patterns of language development and multilingualism, including terminology (e.g., accent vs. dialect), typical development (e.g., second language acquisition), and acquisition contexts (e.g., sequential, simultaneous).
• Describe models of multilingual education and English language development (ELD).
• Examine how specific speech, language, and hearing health conditions manifest in multilingual speakers.
• Implement assessment processes that (a) reduce bias and (b) support an informative and accurate multilingual assessment.
• Recognize factors to consider in selecting language(s) of intervention.
• Implement strategies to facilitate generalization of treatment effects between languages and contexts.
• Support the maintenance of heritage language comprehension and use for individuals who communicate by using AAC or assistive technology.
• Consult and collaborate with the multilingual and ELD instructors during assessment and intervention in schools. This collaboration can occur in many ways, ranging from meaningful conversations to formal, planned activities.

To answer the question “what is the difference?” that I posed in the title, my response is this: A bilingual or multilingual service provider would have these competencies (listed above) as considerations in mind and would be working toward becoming more culturally responsive and trauma-informed (i.e., working knowledge of SDOH, ACEs).

References:

Multilingual Service Provider 2023 Survey Report from ASHA

ASHA Practice Portal – Multilingual Service Providers

ASHA Practice Portal – Cultural Responsiveness

Dr. Liz Peña’s Blogpost “Bilingual SLP or SLP who is bilingual?”

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