Screening or Testing Articulation on the iPad: Which App Should I Choose?

Over the years we all got the routine of articulation testing down: find clean protocols (or buy more when we run out), dig out the test and the scoring book, rush to transcribe what we hear, then spend twice as long as the session itself scoring and writing the report. Yes, it was painful. Luckily, someone said, “There has to be a better way!”

Technology and brilliant minds have changed speech assessment. In 2010, Smarty Ears released Sunny Articulation and Phonology Test, which could be used as a screener or to add data to the paper-and-pencil tests we had all used for far too long. Sunny was sold around the world and won the hearts of thousands of SLPs.

Many school districts and government agencies, though, still require standardized assessments. So Smarty Ears partnered with a Texas company to create and standardize a tool that works for bilingual students as well as monolingual Spanish or English speakers. That is how the Bilingual Articulation and Phonology Assessment (BAPA) was born. BAPA used the technology behind Sunny to become a fully standardized articulation and phonology assessment. It came out in 2013 and quickly became the preferred choice among bilingual clinicians.

In 2015, listening to clinicians’ feedback, Smarty Ears created an English-only version of BAPA at a lower price for clinicians who only assess in English: iTAP, the Test of Articulation and Phonology.

What all three apps had in common

• Enter each student’s name and track progress over time
• Test all English phonemes, including clusters
• Two options: screening and full assessment
• Record the student’s productions in the same app you use to give the test
• Email results right after the test
• Positive feedback for students throughout the test
• Sample recordings of each target word when you touch the picture
• Add notes during the assessment

The key differences

iTAP

• Standardized
• English only

BAPA

• Standardized
• For English monolinguals, Spanish monolinguals and English/Spanish bilinguals

Sunny

• Not standardized (a qualitative assessment only)
• English only
• Included vowel, sentence and “R” screeners

What to use today

Sunny and iTAP are no longer available. Today, our articulation assessments are AAT Plus for English and BAPA Plus for English and Spanish.