This paper focused on the assessment of phonological skills amongst children with developmental dyslexia. Findings from assessments of English and Hungarian monolingual children with and without literacy deficits and bilingual Filipino children with and without literacy deficits in English indicated that performance on phonological-based tasks often used in dyslexia assessment batteries was influenced by the language background. Monolingual English children with poor literacy skills showed characteristic deficits in most areas of phonological ability, whereas Hungarian counterparts showed little evidence of such difficulties. Bilingual Filipino children with poor English literacy skills showed equivalent profiles to their monolingual counterparts only when assessments in both English and Filipino were considered. The paper discusses difficulties of generalising assessment procedures from one language context to another.