Extemporaneous Oral Interpretations of Storybooks by Bilingual Speech Language Pathologists: Utilization of a Decision Tree to Select Appropriate Storybooks

Abstract

Many bilingual speech language pathologists (BiSLPs) report orally interpreting storybooks from a source to a target language when incorporating storybooks into therapy. Our purpose was to propose a decision tree for BiSLPs to use for selecting storybooks written in English for extemporaneous interpretation to another language. To create the proposed four-step decision tree, the authors combined four elements: i) a list of questions to help BiSLPs self-assess their awareness of linguistic/cultural differences between their source and target languages, ii) a self-assessment of language proficiency, iii) the client's oral language goals, and iv) the MetaMetric's Lexile Scores and Early Reading Indicators for storybooks. A BiSLP, fluent in Vietnamese and English, utilized the proposed decision tree and explained the strengths and challenges.