Assessing Expressive Language Samples of ECE Students

Language Disorders in Children

MLU

The mean length of utterance in Jay's sample of 25 meaningful utterances is 3.8 or 3.5. Three uses of slang (gotta, gonna) by Jay increase the count to 83 morphemes, which results in a score of 3.8. If these slang words were considered one morpheme, the rate would be 3.5. However, since the meaning of the slang words is compound, as in "got to" or "going to," the slang words may be considered two morphemes for each occurrence. The MLUM for children with language impairment (affected) in the age range 3.0 to 3.5 years is 2.84. Jay's MLUM falls between the age ranges of 5.0 to 5.5 years and 5.6 to 5.11 years for children with language impairment, which shows MLUM to be 3.72 and 3.95, respectively (Rice, et al., 2010). The MLUM for children without language impairment has been shown to be higher in each age range (Rice, et al., 2010). Accordingly, Jay's MLUM can be considered to be within typical limits. The main caveat in this analysis is that 25 intelligible utterances is low, by research standards that recommend a sample of more than 50 utterances (Rice, et al., 2010).

MLUW

MLUM

Group

Age Range

N

Mean

Std Dev

Cohen's d Effect Size

Mean

Std Dev

Cohen's d Effect Size

Affected

2;6-2;11

6

2.37

0.32

0.93

2.59

0.39

0.90

Affected

3;0-3;5

15

2.84

0.38

0.97

3.07

0.48

1.07

Affected

3;6-3;11

24

3.10

0.75

1.04

3.36

0.80

1.09

Affected

4;0-4;5

54

3.31

0.70

1.22

3.64

0.80

1.22

Affected

4;6-4;11

72

3.60

0.62

0.95

3.95

0.70

1.01

Affected

5;0-5;5

84

3.72

0.61

1.05

4.09

0.70

1.10

Affected

5;6-5;11

97

3.95

0.60

0.85

4.34

0.67

0.89

Source: Rice, et al., 2010.

DSS

DSS Score = # of points / # of utterances

Jay's Developmental Sentence Score on the 25 utterances sample is 100 points divided by 15 sentences = 6.67. One limitation of this analysis is that the DSS uses a 50 utterances sample. Only children that score below the 10 percentile or more than one standard deviation below the mean are likely to need intervention. Jay scores at the 50th percentile, which shows a benchmark score of 6.64 for 3 years 6-month.

Correct/Incorrect Form Analysis

Jay's speech sample notably lacks use of past tense, third person, possessives, contractible copula, and contractible auxiliary phrases. Referencing Brown's morphemes, Jay's use of language corresponds with the age of mastery range for 28 to 46 months. At 41 months of age, Jay is approaching the upper end of the range but his expressive language appears to be developing normally. It is possible that the language sample has not produced many opportunities for Jay to use past tense, as it appears that he is narrating his play -- perhaps interacting with objects while an adult looks on.

Type Token Ratio

Jay's Type Token Ratio (TTR) scored the conventional way is .67. This score is calculated by dividing the number of different words produced in the sample by the total number of words in the sample. In Jay's case, this calculation is TTR = 52 / 78 = .67

When using the Stickler (1987) method of calculating the Type Token Ratio (TTR), the calculation is as follows: The number of different words divided by the total number of words equals the TTR percentage. For Jay's sample, the TTR using the Stickler method is: 47 different words / 69 total number of words = .68 TTR. This ratio is within the expected range for normally developing children.

Summary Report

Jay is a 3-year 5-month-old boy who has been enrolled in an Early Childhood Education classroom for the past half-year of school. Jay's birth history is unremarkable, and he has achieved gross and fine motor developmental milestones at appropriate ages. He is making progress with articulation: Jay exhibits several consonant clusters, and his / r / sound is still affected by gliding. Jay's receptive language appears to have developed at appropriate levels. However, Jay was delayed in his expressive language, which is the current focus of his re-evaluation in this clinic.

A sample of 25 intelligible utterances obtained during an observation in the clinic, in which Jay played and interacted with his mother, provided the basis for the language analysis. The following assessments were conducted: MLU, DSS, Correct/Incorrect Form Analysis, and Type Token Ratio.

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). Although Roger Brown's five stages of language development differ from the scoring used in the MLU interpretation in this paper, Jay is scores within normal limits in this second version, also. Brown describes a MLU score of 3.0 to 3.75 as Stage IV of language development, which corresponds with an approximate age of 35 to 40 months. Jay has reached 41 months of age at the time of this evaluation, which puts him in Stage V of language development, with corresponding ages of 41 to 46 months. Jay's MLU score is 3.5, which may be interpreted to indicate that Jay is moderately behind in language development on this particular scale. As has been noted in this report, Jay may quite simply prefer to use shorter sentences. But what is of particular interest is that the phrases and shorter sentences appear to be less accurate than the few longer sentences that Jay speaks.

Developmental Sentence Score (DSS). Jay scores in the normal range for grammatical sentence construction, however, his sample of 25 intelligible utterances spans the spectrum from one word utterances to well-spoken requests, such as: "When are we gonna do that?" And, "I want some of those people." Jay tends to use pronouns more often than he names of labels things. Therapists refer to children who us many pronouns as pronominal children, and recognize that these children tend to use sentence structure earlier than nominal children, who ten to use names to describe things. Jay appears to just be starting to use negation, which is a robust demonstration of language development in his age group. Jay's parents and ECE teachers can encourage Jay to begin using conjunctions to link those short sentences and phrases he seems to prefer.

Correct/Incorrect Form Analysis. Parents and teachers are encouraged to continue modeling clear and simple models for expressive language, taking a zone of proximal development approach. For example, to provide scaffolding to Jay's expressive language, his ECE teachers and his parents may wish to make frequent past tense, regular third person references. Supplying a narrative about the activities of others can provide manageable models for Jay to emulate. For instance, say: "Morgan pulled the wagon. He pulled the wagon to our house." Or, "Curious George jumped down. He jumped down from the tree." And so on. Expressive language models will need to be mindful to use fewer irregular verbs, and to supply proper nouns and prepositions in close proximity.