A s the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) population of the United States continues to increase dramatically, speechlanguage pathologists (SLPs) face the challenge how best to serve children whose primary language is not English. One way of overcoming the bilingual communication barrier is for bilingual children to alternate their two languages (i.e., code switching and code mixing). Frequently, SLPs have limited understanding of the functions and patterns of language alternation in bilingual children. Language alternation is a normal, common, and important aspect of bilingualism. This investigation aims to answer several basic questions regarding normal code mixing behaviors in a young bilingual child, namely, (a) What syntactic elements are mixed most frequently in conversational discourse in a young bilingual child? and (b) What information can be applied to a diagnostic or therapeutic situation? Spontaneous speech samples of a bilingual Spanish-English speaking child were collected during a period of 17 months. The child was between the ages of 6 and 8 years. Descriptive analysis of the data revealed percentages and rank ordering of syntactic elements switched in the longitudinal language samples obtained. Specific recommendations for using code mixing in therapy for bilingual and monolingual speech-language pathologists are given.As the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) population of the United States continues to increase dramatically, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) face the educational challenge of how best to serve children whose primary language is not English. Twenty-five percent of North Americans define themselves as Hispanic or Nonwhite (Henry, 1990). The issue is compounded when monolingual speech-language pathologists must serve children and families from non-English speaking homes. As the CLD child engages in communication with others, she or he is often faced with the predicament of which language to use to best communicate with family, peers, and teachers in school. One way of overcoming this communication and language predicament is for these children to alternate between two (or more) languages (Faltis, 1989).Language alternation-the use of two languages in discourse-can be divided into two major types: (a) code switching, and (b) code mixing. Code switching is defined as the alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence, or constituent. Intersentential alternations occur when the switch is made across sentence boundaries (e.g., Ya, se acab6 [It is over], Siéntate [Sit down]), whereas intrasentential alternation occurs when the switch is made within a sentence. Language alternation within a sentence is also known as code mixing (Grosjean, 1982;Torres, 1989). Embedded words, phrases, and sentences from two languages are found within a sentence (e.g.,&dquo;Each book es uno [is one]).Unfortunately, language alternation behavior is a phenomenon that few SLPs understand well. Cheng and Butler (1989) stated that, &dquo;Professionals in speech-language path...