Why Narrative Assessment is Especially Important for Bilingual Children
For bilingual and multilingual children, assessment is more complex because language does not develop in a single, separate system.
A child may:
know a word in Cantonese but not English
use more complex grammar in their home language
tell richer, more detailed stories with family members than they do with an unfamiliar clinician
have different strengths across each language
If we only assess one language, we may only see one piece of the puzzle.
This is where we risk confusing: language difference → with → language disorder
A child’s communication ability cannot be understood by looking at one language in isolation.
Narrative assessment allows us to explore something deeper: how a child understands, organises and communicates experiences across their languages.
Assessments like the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) was designed specifically to support the assessment of narrative abilities in multilingual children. It allows clinicians to examine narrative production and comprehension across languages, helping us better understand a child’s overall language ability rather than focusing only on individual vocabulary or grammar skills.
This is powerful because narratives rely on deeper language skills. They show us how children connect ideas, explain events, understand perspectives and make meaning, not just whether they know individual words.
What are we actually looking at during a narrative assessment?
Macrostructure: The big picture
Macrostructure is the “story skeleton”.
It looks at whether a child understands how stories are organised:
Who?
Who are the characters?
Where?
What is the setting?
What happened?
What was the problem or event?
Why did it happen?
What were the character’s goals, thoughts or motivations?
How did it end?
What was the resolution?
A child with strong narrative macrostructure understands the overall structure of a story. They can organise events, connect ideas and communicate the main message.
This is particularly important for bilingual children because a child may have limited vocabulary in English but still demonstrate strong storytelling abilities in their home language.
Microstructure: The details
Microstructure focuses on the language used to build the story.
This includes:
Vocabulary diversity
Sentence complexity
Grammatical accuracy
Connectives (because, after, although)
Pronouns
Verb tense
Descriptive language
A child may have strong vocabulary but struggle to organise a coherent story.
Another child may use shorter or simpler sentences but demonstrate excellent understanding of story structure.
Narrative assessment helps us understand these differences and identify where support is needed.
Should bilingual children be assessed in both languages?
Whenever possible, yes. A bilingual child’s language abilities are distributed across their languages. One language may be stronger for storytelling. Another may be stronger for academic vocabulary. One language may be connected to grandparents, family memories and emotions. Another may be connected to school, friendships and learning.
This is why gathering information about:
language exposure
opportunities to use each language
family communication patterns
cultural experiences
It is an essential part of a culturally responsive assessment.
A culturally responsive assessment does not ask: “Which language is the child better at?”
Instead, we ask: “How does this child communicate across their whole linguistic system?”
Narrative assessment changes the questions we ask:
Instead of asking: “Does this child know enough English words?”
We ask: “How does this child organise and communicate ideas?”
Instead of asking: “Why isn’t this bilingual child performing like a monolingual child?”
We ask: “What does this child’s communication look like across their languages and environments?”
Instead of asking: “Is this child delayed because they speak two languages?”
We ask: “Are there consistent difficulties across languages and contexts?”
A story is more than a story
Our role as speech pathologists is to create the conditions where those stories can be heard.
Narrative assessment gives us a richer understanding of children’s communication, not just what they know, but how they think, connect and share their world. Because every child deserves to be understood…
Beyond a score.
Beyond one language.
Beyond one assessment.
Beyond one moment in time.
Final Thought
For bilingual children, narrative assessment allows us to move beyond asking ‘How much English does this child know?’ and towards understanding ‘How does this child communicate across their whole linguistic repertoire?’"
Want to learn more about supporting bilingual and multilingual children?
Understanding bilingual development and conducting culturally responsive assessments requires looking beyond individual test scores and single-language measures.
In Beyond One Language, we explore the foundations of bilingualism, assessment approaches, therapy considerations and practical strategies to support multilingual children and their families.
You’ll learn how to:
understand bilingual language development
differentiate language difference from language disorder
select and interpret appropriate assessment approaches
use tools such as narrative assessment to better understand a child’s communication profile
advocate for culturally and linguistically responsive practice
Because every child deserves to be understood beyond one language.
References / Further Reading
Gagarina, N., Klop, D., Kunnari, S., et al. (2019). MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised.
Paradis, J., Genesee, F., & Crago, M. (2010). Dual Language Development & Disorders: A Handbook on Bilingualism and Second Language Learning.
Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study
