Sold in a package of 20 forms, these three English subtests are a part of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA), a language assessment for use with children ages 4 through 6 years who have varying degrees of bilingualism. Standardized and norm-referenced, the subtests take about 15 minutes each and address the key domains of morphosyntax, semantics, and phonology.

• BESA Phonology Subtest. A single-word phonological assessment, the English measure of this subtest assesses phonological production of 31 English words. When conducted with the Spanish measure (learn more here), this subtest is designed to differentially diagnose typical from atypical phonological skills in Spanish-English bilingual children.


• BESA Morphosyntax Subtest. This subtest employs cloze and sentence repetition tasks to target grammatical morphemes and sentence structures that were predicted to be difficult for children with language impairment in English. A grammatical cloze subscore, a sentence repetition subscore, and a total score that is a composite of those two subscores are derived.


• BESA Semantics Subtest. This subtest targets six tasks: analogies, characteristic properties, categorization, functions, linguistic concepts, and similarities and differences. The English semantics subtest has a total of 25 items: 10 receptive and 15 expressive. Subscores are provided for semantics receptive and semantics expressive, as well as a total semantics score for each language.

• identify phonological and/or language impairment in bilingual children and English language learners using a standardized protocol
• differentiate between a delay in English language acquisition and a true language disorder
• document children's speech and language strengths and needs
• monitor children's progress in both languages and use the information to make decisions about intervention

About the Author:

Elizabeth Peña, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Her work focuses on differentiating language impairment from language difference in bilingual children. Her assessment work employs a variety of methods including standardized and dynamic assessment. She is interested in how children from diverse linguistic backgrounds learn new language skills and how they lexicalize their conceptual knowledge across two languages and has published extensively in these areas. She is a Fellow of the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association.

Vera Gutiérrez-Clellen is professor emeritus in the School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Diego State University. Her research focused on the development of assessment measures for bilingual Spanish-English children and the evaluation of language intervention approaches for Latino children with language impairments.

Aquiles Iglesias, Ph.D., is Professor and Founding Director of the Speech-Language Pathology Program at the University of Delaware. He was formerly a professor at Temple University and held various administrative positions. His major area of research is cultural and linguistic diversity, with a concentration on language acquisition in bilingual children. He developed the BESA (Bilingual English/Spanish Assessment) and has numerous publications. He is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and received its highest award, Honors of the Association.

Brian A. Goldstein, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is Provost & VP for Academic Affairs and Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA. He received a masters and doctorate in speech-language pathology from Temple University and a bachelors in Linguistics and Cognitive Science from Brandeis University. He is well-published in the area of speech sound development and disorders in bilingual populations. His focus is on phonological development and disorders in monolingual Spanish-speaking and Spanish-English bilingual children. He is a fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and received ASHA's Certificate of Recognition for Special Contribution in Multicultural Affairs.

Lisa M. Bedore, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Professor and Chair, Communication Sciences and Disorders, College of Public Health, Temple University, 1701 N. 13th Street, Weiss Hall 113, Philadelphia, PA 19122

Dr. Bedore is Professor and Chair of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department at Temple University in Philadelphia. She is a bilingual speech-language pathologist by training. Her research interests focus on understanding the nature of language impairment in bilingual children and the factors that influence language outcomes for bilingual children. Many of her publications focus on the relationships between bilingual language experience and language performance in bilingual children. A key practical application of this work is the identification of clinical markers of language impairment that can be applied to assessments such as the BESA.