Language Sampling: The Heart and Soul of Language Assessment

Language samples are considered one of the best ways to learn about a child’s language system. Unfortunately, clinicians receive varying degrees of training in language sample elicitation, transcription, and coding, and there are few opportunities to develop expertise in sample analysis unless one works in a research lab. In this talk, Drs. Pavelko and Oetting will provide an overview of the heart and soul of the language sample, sharing evidence-based procedural advances that can save a clinician time and linguistic advances that can help a clinician appropriately code and interpret children’s utterances across various dialects of English.

Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised (SUGAR): Language Sampling

This interactive presentation discusses the SUGAR (Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised) method of language sampling and analysis. Results from several research studies indicated that language samples can be collected, transcribed and analyzed using SUGAR in approximately 20 minutes and that the resultant language sample analysis (LSA) metrics can be used to accurately and efficiently identify children with language impairment. This session will discuss the background of the SUGAR method and introduce the first cornerstones of the SUGAR method: robust sampling.

The SUGAR Blocks of Language Sampling: Clinical Decision Making

This interactive presentation discusses the SUGAR (Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised) method of language sampling and analysis. Results from several research studies indicated that language samples can be collected, transcribed and analyzed using SUGAR in approximately 20 minutes and that the resultant language sample analysis (LSA) metrics can be used to accurately and efficiently identify children with language impairment. This session will discuss how to use results obtained from a SUGAR language sample to make clinical decisions and identify potential therapy targets.

The SUGAR Cubes of Language Sampling: Transcription and Analysis

This interactive presentation discusses the SUGAR (Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised) method of language sampling and analysis. Results from several research studies indicated that language samples can be collected, transcribed and analyzed using SUGAR in approximately 20 minutes and that the resultant language sample analysis (LSA) metrics can be used to accurately and efficiently identify children with language impairment. This session will introduce the SUGAR method of transcribing and analyzing language samples.

Transcribing Child Language Across Dialects of English

Most clinicians learned to transcribe samples for children who speak General American English (GAE), yet many clients speak dialects that differ from GAE. When a child doesn't speak GAE, clinicians also often do not know when a child's production of a word, inflection, or phrase should be considered appropriate or inappropriate for a child's dialect. This talk will present transcription and coding guidelines to use with children who speak a variety of English dialects that differ from GAE.

Tutorial on Complex Verb Structures

This talk will first review morphology associated with children's verb production within language samples as is often taught using Roger Brown's 1974 framework. Expanding on this foundation, we will then explore other morphological structures (e.g., participles, particles, and auxiliaries other than BE and DO) children produce during language samples and consider diagnostic tests the speech-language pathologist can implement to identify these structures, especially when the structures involve camaflouged forms across dialects of English.

Using Dialect Discovery Worksheets with Language Samples

Clinicians are experts at detecting patterns of behavior to identify a child's strengths and weaknesses, whether the area of concern is speech, language, and/or fluency. This talk will introduce dialect discovery worksheets that allow a clinician to use a language sample to identify patterns of grammar strengths and weaknesses across all dialects of English.