Bilingual Articulation Phonology Assessment (BAPA)- Spanish & English
The Bilingual Articulation and Phonology Assessment (BAPA) was developed for the purpose of assess-ing the articulatory and phonological abilities of Spanish-speaking and bilingual (English-Spanish) children. Best practices for assessment of speech sound disorders for bilingual children recommends an as-sessment of all languages spoken by the child. Through assessing both languages, one can more easily rule out or explain second-language influences and can describe errors observed in both languages as well as those errors specific to each language. This evaluation is to be considered as part of a full speech evaluation to include: measures of intelligibility, considerations for second language influence, and con-siderations for the age of acquisition of each phoneme.
The BAPA was developed by Barbara Fernandes, Ellen Kester, Mary Bauman, and Scott Prath and published by Smarty Ears. The BAPA can be used with individuals of all age groups. The BAPA is compatible with the iPad running iOS 4.0 or above.
The BAPA aids in obtaining a complete picture of a child’s overall speech sound abilities by assessing and analyzing errors according to both articulation errors and phonological errors. A child may have difficulties with the movement of the speech mechanisms to produce a sound (articulation), with under-standing and applying the correct phonological rules or patterns for production (phonology), or a combi-nation of both. An understanding of the specific types of errors made by a child will result in an intervention plan that can more appropriately target the child’s underlying speech deficiency.
A near-native proficiency in both oral and written Spanish is needed to administer the BAPA. Knowledge of the (1) words and the (2) sounds of the language spoken by the child enables an examiner to cor-rectly identify which errors have been produced. When synonyms or dialectal variations are produced during testing (e.g., producing playera for camisa [shirt]), a high level of proficiency in Spanish will enable the examiner to direct the child to produce the target while still validating his or her response. This can also be particularly important for a child with highly unintelligible speech, who may produce the dialectal variation in error. Understanding that the intended word began with an initial /p/ (playera) will pre-vent the examiner from marking the initial sound as an error of fronting (i.e., /p/ replacing the /k/ for camisa) when /p/ was correct for the intended word.
