The How and Why of Collecting a Language Sample

SLPs reading this essay: I have a favor to ask you. Please suspend judgment when reading this post. I’m sharing a time-saving and accurate way to complete one of our most valued activities. And also one of the most despised. The dreaded language sample! I know. Many of us still need counseling from the language sampling rituals we endured in grad school. But things change, and technology and techniques improve, so please read on. Language samples provide some of the most useful information we can gather about a child’s communication because it’s an immediate snapshot of: Utterance length Complexity Articulation abilities Narrative skills Perspective-taking Comprehension Imitation Direction-following abilities Here’s what a language sample looks like: “There once was a boy and a frog.” [initiation / character identification] “Then, he jumped inside the box” [cohesive element / past tense / preposition use/ object name] “They ran behind the trees” [ pronoun / past tense / preposition / article / plural use] With a mean-length-of-utterance of 6.3. Beat that for data-taking! As a bilingual SLP, I also find that language samples offer bonus details for the diverse populations I—and many of you—serve. No formal assessment can provide information I get from language samples, such as: Second-language influence Cultural differences Low language experience Yet, a language sample helps us sort this out. 4 Steps to quickly and accurately collect a language s...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Private Practice Schools Slider Speech-Language Pathology Bilingual assessment bilingual service delivery Language Disorders Source Type: blogs