Language intervention in bilingual children: From international evaluated evidence to a call for evidence in Italy

In our Western and industrialized society, there is an increasing number of plu- rilingual individuals who know at least two distinct languages. Recent attention has been focused on bilingual children and how they learn to speak. A current research question that this work aims to answer is: How can we rehabilitate the language abilities of bilingual children who experience language difficulties? To address this question, this document begins with the need to analyze the texts and contents of national and international guidelines drafted by competent institutions, which are considered as the compass guiding the actions of health professionals who rehabili- tate communicative and linguistic skills, namely speech and language therapists. Subsequently, a non-systematic review of the literature related to this research axis was conducted, starting from the assumption that the analysis of the available scien- tific evidence is needed to support and promote evidence-based clinical speech and language therapy practice. The tools, evidence, and theoretical and practical strate- gies available to speech therapists to increase the chances of effectively achieving rehabilitative goals were discussed. Finally, considering the state of the art and the absence of scientifically evaluated evidence in the rehabilitative care of bilingual children with language difficulties, a proposal for experimental projects was launched to the scientific community, aiming to begin building the foundations of rehabilitative proposals based on scientific evidence for the Italian speech and lan- guage therapy intervention for bilingual Italian-speaking children.