How can you tell if young bilingual children are making age-appropriate language progress? Use the Quick Interactive Language Screener™: English–Spanish (QUILS™: ES), a web-based, game-like screener for probing the language skills of English–Spanish bilingual children. Developed for use with children from ages 3 through 5, QUILS: ES measures not only language products (what the child already knows in both languages) but also language processes (how the child learns new words and grammar structures).

Like the QUILS screener for children whose primary language is English, QUILS: ES looks at three critical areas:

• Vocabulary: What words do children already know?
• Syntax: What do children understand about how words go together in sentences?
• Process: How skilled are children at learning new language items?

To give an accurate, comprehensive picture of the skills of bilingual children, QUILS: ES consists of separate English and Spanish sections. The screener uses the child’s highest score per skill type across both the English and Spanish sections to derive their Best Overall Score and their Best Scores for each of the three areas. The English and Spanish section of QUILS: ES were carefully developed to reflect the variability in grammar rules and word meanings across both languages. The English section is different from the monolingual QUILS and includes all new items, specifically chosen to complement the Spanish section.