Diagnosing developmental language disorder in multilingual children
Newcastle University speech and language experts share recent findings.
21 January 2026
Writing for The Conversation, Newcastle University speech and language experts share recent findings on developmental language disorder (DLD).
Teresa Garrido-Tamayo (Visiting Researcher in Speech and Language Sciences), Carolyn Letts (Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences) and Laurence White (Reader in Speech Science) discuss how DLD can have lifelong effects, and can be easily missed in multilingual children.
They outline the key signs that a multilingual child may be at risk of DLD, promising new tools and assessments, and how the right support can transform a child's life outcomes.
