Speech Assessment of Children's Home Language(s) (SACHL)

The Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Languages (SACHL, Margetson & McLeod, 2026), is a collaborative assessment approach where speech-language pathologists (SLPs) draw on the expertise of multilingual families and interpreters in their knowledge of their home language.

In partnership with families and interpreters, SLPs determine whether children are experiencing speech difficulties in all the languages that they speak and decide together whether multilingual children would benefit from intervention.

By implementing the SACHL, it is envisaged that: (a) SLPs will be equipped with decision-making skills for considering the difference between children who are typical language learners and children who have speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN), particularly speech sound disorder (SSD) and (b) that multilingual children may be less likely to be under- or over-diagnosed and more likely to receive appropriate communication support.

Part 1: Multilingual Preparation

Step 1. Consider your own cultural responsivity and linguistic knowledge.

Step 2. Learn about the child’s home language(s) and dialect(s) and make a plan for transcription.

Step 3. Select a single word speech assessment tool in each language.

Step 4. Collaborate with an assessment partner (e.g., family member, interpreter) who speaks the child’s home language who can assist in:

  1. Recording the assessment target words (so the SLP can determine if the child matches the adult target)
  2. Eliciting a single word and connected speech sample in the home language with the child
  3. Identifying which home language sounds and words are difficult for the child to produce
  4. Identifying cross-linguistic transfer during the English speech assessment

Part 2: Multilingual Assessment

Step 5. Conduct case history, language history profiles, language, hearing and oro-motor assessment.

Step 6. Society language (e.g., English) speech assessment: administer the assessment and check whether the child used non-shared consonants from the home language.

Step 7. Home language speech assessment: Ask the assessment partner to administer the child’s home language speech assessment and check whether the assessment partner heard any consonant mismatches.

Part 3: Multilingual Analysis

Step 8. Transcribe: Compare the child’s productions to the target adult’s productions in the home language to help decide if they are correct. Use recordings of the child’s and adult’s speech to finalise your transcriptions.

Step 9. Analyse the speech samples in each language to form a description of the child’s entire phonological repertoire.

  1. Consider reasons for each of the child’s mismatches.
  2. Note similarities and differences in the child’s productions across languages.
  3. Use a converging evidence approach and criterion-referenced measures across languages for differential diagnosis.

Step 10. Share assessment findings with the family (strengths and concerns) and plan next steps.

Reprinted with permission from Margetson and McLeod (2026)

Reference

Margetson, K., & McLeod, S. (2026). Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL): A clinical protocol. In S. McLeod (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of speech development in languages of the world. Oxford University Press.

Margetson, K., & McLeod, S. (2025). Multilingual speech assessment: Using an implementation science framework to explore acceptability of the Speech Assessment of Children's Home Language(s) (SACHL). American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology,Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_AJSLP-25-00141

Coming soon: SACHL workbooks for different languages

More information

Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2025). Cross-linguistic transfer in Vietnamese-English speech. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 56(4) 1192-1216. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-25-00046

Washington, K. N., Crowe, K., McLeod, S.,Margetson, K., Bazzocchi, N. B. M., Kokotek, L. E., van der Straten Waillet, P., Másdóttir, T., & Volhardt M. D. S., (2025). Methods of diagnosing speech sound disorders in multilingual children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 56(4), 469-487 https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_LSHSS-24-00099

Margetson, K., McLeod, S., Verdon, S., & Tran, V. H. (2023). Transcribing multilingual children’s and adults’ speech. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 37 (4-6), 415-435. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699206.2022.2051073

Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2023). Cross-linguistic transfer and ambient phonology: Impact on diagnosis of speech sound disorders in a longitudinal bilingual case study. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech, 4(3), 311-339. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmbs.23672

Margetson, K., McLeod, S., & Verdon, S. (2024). Diagnosing speech sound disorder in bilingual Vietnamese-English–speaking children: Are English-only assessments sufficient? In E. Babatsouli (Ed.), Multilingual acquisition and learning: An ecosystemic view to diversity (pp. 217-245). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Suggested citation

Margetson, K., & McLeod, S. (2025). Speech Assessment of Children’s Home Language(s) (SACHL). Charles Sturt University. https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/sachl