Multilingual Student in Difficulty: What to Check Before Referring to Speech Therapy?

A student learning French as a second language does not need a speech therapy referral every time they encounter a difficulty. Before making a referral, several factors should be considered: their exposure to the school's language, their abilities in their home language, their response to explicit support, and observations from their family. A difficulty observed only in the school's language, in a student who has recently started learning that language, is not automatically a disorder.

This is the kind of statement we'd like to be able to make in a single block during a team meeting. The problem is that, in the heat of the moment, two common reflexes often emerge, and both need to be nuanced.

Should We Stop Speaking the Home Language?

This is probably the most given advice and the least supported by research. The idea behind it: if the student is 100% immersed in the school's language, they will progress faster. In practice, the opposite most often occurs.

Maintaining the home language does not hinder the learning of the school language (Paradis, Genesee, and Crago, 2021). A child's two languages do not compete for limited space. A well-developed home language even provides a foundation upon which the school language can build: vocabulary, narrative structures, and concepts already understood.

What truly matters is the quality of interactions at home, not the language in which they occur. A parent who tells stories, explains, and discusses extensively in their strongest language offers a richer environment than a parent who forces limited French.

Can a Multilingual Student Regress After the Summer?

The start of the school year brings this comment back every year. A student who spoke well in June seems to have lost everything by September. This is rarely a regression. It's a dip in exposure: several weeks with less school French, fewer classroom routines, sometimes much more home language.

Before concluding there's a problem, three checks help to clarify:

• Actual exposure during the summer: how much time, with whom, and in what languages.
• The student's trajectory, compared to what was known about them before, not just their September classmates.
• The speed of recovery after a few weeks of routines and explicit instruction. A student who quickly regains what they seemed to have lost provides reassuring information.

What is the difference between social language and academic language?

A student comfortable in the playground doesn't necessarily have the tools to follow a science class. Social and conversational language develops in 2 to 5 years. Academic language, which allows for explaining, justifying, and summarizing, takes 7 to 10 years (Cummins, 1979; Hakuta, Butler, and Witt, 2000).

These are not individual dates, but group averages. Their utility lies elsewhere: they remind us that a student who is orally fluent may still have years of support ahead of them, without this delay necessarily signaling a disorder.

What should be documented before referring to speech therapy?

A useful referral isn't one that arrives quickly; it's one that arrives with a profile. Five blocks of information make the difference between "he's having difficulty" and an actionable observation for the team.

1. Linguistic profile. The languages understood and used, with whom they are spoken, how long the student has been exposed to the school language, and their previous academic background.
2. Observation conditions. The subjects in which difficulties are observed, the level of abstraction required, the context of small or large groups, and the situations in which the student succeeds better, for example, with gestures, images, or modeling.
3. Support already in place. Repetition, rephrasing, extended response time, explicitly taught vocabulary, or different allowed ways of responding.
4. Response to support. This is often the most telling block: does the student progress when explicit instruction is provided? Do they retain learning from one session to the next? Can they transfer it to a new task?
5. Partnership with the family. Parents' observations in the home language help complete the picture, not to "test" the school language, but to better understand the child's language functioning in their various contexts.

If the first three blocks are empty, the best next step is often to further document the situation and continue support for two to four weeks. A referral without a linguistic profile often becomes a postponed assessment due to insufficient information to interpret it.

When to refer a multilingual student to speech therapy?

An additional language is not a difficulty in itself. A difficulty observed only in the school language is not enough to conclude a disorder.

A referral becomes more relevant when difficulties persist despite support, are observed in multiple contexts, or are also present in the home language.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a difficulty only in French mean that a multilingual student has a disorder?

No. For a student who has recently started learning French, a difficulty observed only in the school language must be interpreted taking into account their exposure to French, their linguistic profile, and their progress when explicit support is offered.

Should families be asked to speak French at home?

No. Maintaining the home language does not hinder the learning of the school language. The quality and richness of exchanges with the family are more important than forcing the use of a language that the parent masters less well.

To go further.

References

Cummins, J. (1979). Cognitive/academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age question and some other matters. Working Papers on Bilingualism, 19, 121-129.

Hakuta, K., Butler, Y. G., and Witt, D. (2000). How long does it take English learners to attain proficiency? University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute.

Paradis, J., Genesee, F., and Crago, M. B. (2021). Dual language development and disorders: A handbook on bilingualism and second language learning (3rd ed.). Brookes Publishing.