Identifying Children with Language Problems in the Classroom
Teachers should be alert for the following behaviors which may indicate a language impairment
in need of clinical intervention.
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Mispronounces sounds and words frequently
Omits word endings
Omits small, unemphasized words
Uses immature vocabulary, empty words such as one and thing, or has difficulty
recalling words or naming.
Has difficulty understanding new words and concepts
Uses immature sentence structure or relies almost solely on one form, such as
subject-verb-object, producing boring or dull sounding language
Uses immature questions or negatives
Has difficulty with (circle one or more) verb tensing, pronouns, word order,
articles, irregular verbs, irregular plurals, auxiliary verbs, or prepositions
Has difficult relating sequential events
Has difficulty following directions
Uses inaccurate or vague questions
Forms questions poorly
Has difficulty answering questions
Often makes off-topic or inappropriate comments
Pauses frequently between a remark by self or other and next utterance as if
searching for words
Appears to be attending but remembers little that is said
Has difficulty using language conversationally to (circle one or more) request
needs, greet, respond/reply, relate events, pretend/imagine, request information,
share ideas and feelings, entertain, protest, gain attention, clarify, or reason
Has difficulty interpreting (circle one or more) *figurative language, *humor,
emotions, gestures, or body language
Does not alter manner of speaking for different audiences and locations
Does not seem to consider the effect of language on the listener
Often has verbal misunderstanding of other speakers
Talks incessantly or says very little
Initiates very little communication and is primarily responsive
Has difficulty reading and writing*
Seems to have language skills much below that of other children the same age or
below own skills in other areas such as mechanic, artistic, or social skills
*Figurative language and humor are not comprehended by most preschoolers. Most preschoolers would also not be
able to read or write
.
Adapted from Owens, R. E. (1991) Language disorders: A functional approach to assessment and intervention. New
York: Macmillan.
Indirect Linguistic Elicitation Techniques
The following are a few suggestions from an infinite number of possibilities. Remember that the goal is to elicit
language conversationally and without a “phony” direct cue and such as “Say the whole thing.”
Indirect Technique
Target
Emperor’s new clothes Negative statements
Example
Adult: What a beautiful red shirt (It’s a green sweater)
Child: Dat not red shirt.
Pass it on
Request information
Adult:
Child:
Adult:
Child:
Silly rabbit!
Violating routine)
Protests, directives,
Adult: Here’s your snack.
imperatives
Child: Empty.
Adult: What should I do?
Child: Put juice in.
Non-blabbermouth
Request information
Adult:
Child:
Adult:
Child:
What I have
Request action
Adult: Oh, I can’t wait to do this. It’s such fun.
Child: Show me.
Guess what I did
Request information
Past tense
Adult:
Child:
Adult
Child:
Mumble
Request clarification
Adult: I was really scared so *&%$#@*.
Child: What? or What did you do?
Ask someone else
Request information
Adult:
Child:
Adult:
Child:
Rule giving
Request for objects
Adult: I have some fun toys you can play with. Just ask.
Child: Want Ninja Turtles.
Request for assistance
Initiating conversation Adult: Kevin, ask Mary to come help me please.
Child: Mary, Mrs. Smith wants you to help.
Meaningful modeling
I want X.
Adult: What color should I use. I want green. How about you?
Child: I want red.
He’s X.
Adult: I colored my puppy. He’s white and black. What can you
tell me about your puppy?
Child: He’s happy.
Mark, do you know where Julie lives?
No.
Why don’t you ask her.
(To Julie) Where live?
(Place interesting item on table) Boy, is the neat.
What it is?
A thing-a-ma-bob and it can do neat things.
What it do?
Guess what I did yesterday at the zoo.
Petted sheep?
No, but you’re close.
Petted goats?
What do you need?
Red paint.
Why don’t you ask Carolyn for some.
Want red paint.
Screw Up #1
Locatives, prepositions Adult: Can I wear this here? (Put in wrong place)
Child: No, on your foots.
Screw up #2
Protests, negative
statement
Adult: Here’s your crayons. (Give child glove)
Child: That not crayon.
Adapted from Owens, R.E. (1995). Language disorders: A functional approach to assessment and intervention.
New York: Macmillan.
Owens, R.E., College of St. Rose
Quick Analysis
Language Sampling Made Easy
COLLECTION
Collect only 15 minutes of conversation. This amount of time should be more than enough.
The most important aspect of talking with the child is to avoid as many yes/no or product (one-word answer) questions as possible
and to ask process question (How did/do…) or use “Tell me…” or “I wonder…” statements. Practice before collecting.
• Turnabouts = Comment + Cue for child to talk
• Process Questions
o How did…
o What happened…
o Tell me…
o I wonder what you…
o Why did…
! More than one-word “why” questions
! Not appropriate for kids below 4.5 yrs
• Use narrative elicitations instead of yes/no questions
o Build on what the child says or on what you know
o Begin with…
! Your mom says you…. That sounds like fun. Tell me what happened.
! I know that you…. Tell me what happened.
! Did you ever…. Tell me what you did.
----- ----- ----TRANSCRIPTION
Transcribe the sample directly onto your computer. Only type the child’s utterances, NOT yours. Do NOT include identifying
data. Set “Numbering”, found on the tool bar in the “Paragraph” section, to insure that you only type 50 utterances. Remember
that an utterance is a sentence or less, separated by a pause, drop in voice, inhalation or combination of these. Do not belabor the
process of utterance determination. Stop when you have 50 utterances.
RULES FOR TRANSCRIBING (Think speed!)
• Type in plain English as spoken
• Omit punctuation to save time.
• Do NOT embellish the child’s utterance. In other words, don’t add morphemes that are missing.
• Type words in full even when pronunciation omits portions as follows:
o Talkin’ should be transcribed as “Talking”
o Gonna, wanna, gotta, hafta should be transcribed as “going to, want to, got to, have to”
• Type contractions as is. In other words, don’t should be typed as “don’t” and I’m as “I’m”
• Do NOT include fillers (uhhhh, ummm, like, you know)
• Do NOT include disfluences. Only include the fullest form of what the child actually said. Example: “He said…he
says…he tell me secrets” becomes “He tell me secrets.”
• Do NOT include repeated words unless it is for emphasis, as in “He went down down down in the cave.”
• Don’t spend an inordinate amount of time deciphering unintelligible utterances. If the entire utterance is unintelligible, omit
it. If a word is unintelligible, type nonsense, such as “aaaa” in place of the word.
• If an utterance contains more than two clauses joined with and, consider it a run-on sentence and divide as follows:
We went to the circus and I saw clowns and there were elephants and I got this sweet sticky stuff.
Becomes…
We went to the circus and I saw clowns.
There were elephants and I got this sweet sticky stuff.
Do NOT do this with other conjunctions. Note in the previous example that the “and” was omitted in the second utterance.
Stop at 50 utterances. Save the document. Come out of your document. Right click and copy your document by clicking on
“Copy.” Move the cursor off the document and right click again, scrolling down to “Paste.” You should now have 2 documents.
You will calculate Word and MLU on one and Words/sentence and Clauses/sentence on the other.
----- ----- ----ANALYSIS
WORD COUNT (on Copy #1)
1
Owens, R.E., College of St. Rose
Before doing any actual analysis, make sure the “Numbering” function is off. Nothing else should be on the page accept the
child’s 50 utterances. Turn “off” the “Numbering function by highlighting the entire document (Control-A for PC, CommandA for Apple/Mac), going to the “Paragraph” section of the Toolbar and clicking on “Numbering.”
Word count is on the tool bar at the bottom of your screen. Record the number of words before moving on.
MLU (Continuing on Copy #1)
Words are already separated by a space. Now set off bound morphemes in the same way. For example, “unhappily” would be
“un happi ly,” “bunnies” would be “bunnie s,” and “can’t” will be “ca n’t.” Don’t worry about the spelling of the pieces or about
leftover apostrophes…time is of the essence here. For example, “I’ m un happi ly marrie d” counts as 7 words, although we know
it’s 7 morphemes were counting. Follow the rules below for counting morphemes.
RULES FOR MORPHEME COUNTING (in order to speed the process).
• Count as one morpheme (Do not separate with a space)
Ritualized reduplications (choo-choo)
Irregular past tense verbs (went)
Diminutives (doggie)
Auxiliary verbs
Irregular plurals (men)
• Count as two morphemes (Separate with a space)
Possessive nouns (noun + ‘s or s’)
Plural nouns (noun + s)
Third person singular present tense verbs (verb + s)
Regular past tense verbs (verb + ed)
Present progressive verbs (verb + ing)
• Count as one morpheme each word in Proper names
• Additional bound morphemes to offset with a space
-ful (though ful, ful fill), -ly (real ly), -y (adj.) (grump y but NOT the y in happy), -en (be en, eat en), -th (four th), -ish
(fool ish), -ment (entertain ment), -tion (educa tion), -sion (discuss sion), dis- (dis like), un- (un happy), re- (re do), -er
(comparative)(bigg er), -est (superlative)(big gest), -er (person or thing that does some action, as in hammer er, but NOT
if common, such as teacher)
• Count contractions (do n’t, I’ d, he’ s, we’ ll, they’ ve) as two morphemes
Separate contracted words even when the stem violates traditional spelling. We’re not grading for spelling, so just leave the
pieces as is in order to save time. For example, won’t will end up as the two morphemes “wo” and “n’t.” Although this seems odd, go
with it.
The number of morphemes will appear in the word count on the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Record the number of
morphemes somewhere and divide by 50. Now go to the second copy of the transcript.
WORDS/SENTENCE (On Copy #2)
Use the second copy; NOT the one used for Words or MLU. Before doing any actual analysis, make sure the “Numbering”
function (In the paragraph section on the toolbar at the top) is off. Nothing else should be on the page accept the child’s 50
utterances.
Delete all utterances that are NOT sentences. Follow the rules for determining a sentence.
Both a sentence and a clause contain a subject and a verb, as in Mommy walked. A sentence can have more than one clause, as in
Mommy walked but I ran. (2 clauses, 1 sentence). The critical element in a sentence is a verb.
RULES FOR DETERMINING A SENTENCE
• Count imperatives as clauses. In an imperative, the subject is understood to be you.
Come here. ([You] come here.)(1 clause, 1 sentence)
• Count compound subjects or verbs as a single clause/sentence.
Mommy walked and ran all the way home = 1 clause, 1 sentence (1 subject but 2 verbs)
Bobby and Jim ran fast = 1 clauses, 1 sentence (2 subjects but 1 verb)
I ate cookies and milk. Combined objects don’t count as separate clauses either.
• Count as a clause and a sentence when either the subject or a portion of the verb is omitted because of ellipsis.
2
Owens, R.E., College of St. Rose
Examples:
Who can go with me?
I can = 1 clause (S + aux. verb, so 1 clause, I sentence)
What did you do?
Ran home. (Main verb, so 1 clause, 1 sentence)
• NEVER count as a clause or a sentence if the entire verb is missing, as in “Me” in response to “Who ate the cookies?”
Once you have only sentences represented, record the total words from the word count section on the toolbar at the bottom of
the screen. Record this number.
Switch on the “Numbering” function again, found in the paragraph section of the tool bar at the top of the screen. With this
on, you can tell how many sentences you have.
Divide the number of words by the number of sentences to get the mean words/sentence. Record this value somewhere.
Leave the “Numbering” function on.
CLAUSES/SENTENCE (Continuing on Copy #2)
You know the number of sentences, so now all you need is the number of clauses. Using the same second copy, locate the clauses.
At the beginning of each clause within a sentence, hit the “Enter” key. Remember that the definition for a clause and a
sentence are similar so again use the RULES FOR DETERMINING A SENTENCE. No one is looking over your shoulder to see
if each clause is exactly correct or that the remainder may be a partial clause. Time is of the essence. For example, “The boy who’s in
my class is yukky” consists of two clauses, “The boy is yukky” and “Who is in my class.” Separate these as follow:
The boy
who’s in my class is yukky
Are these correct grammatically? Of course not. Does it count correctly as two clauses? Yes, and that’s our purpose here. We can go
back later and decide on the grammar just as we would go back and interpret test results.
When you have separated the clauses, note the number and divide it by the same number of sentences as in the previous step.
Enter this value on the report form.
DISORDER OR NOT: Compare your results to the data below.
TYPE/TOKEN RATIO: Here’s a freebee! Go to http://www.usingenglish.com/resources/text-statistics.php. Copy and paste the
entire sample without numbering.
TENTATIVE NORMATIVE DATA
3;0-3;5
189.38
34.12
155.26
3;6-3;11
237.93
45.67
192.26
4;0-4;5
254.52
59.42
195.10
4;6-4;11
268.15
40.11
228.03
5;0-5;11
299.47
61.98
237.49
6;0-6;11
305.07
60.45
244.61
7;0-7;11
375.22
50.60
324.63
8;-8;11
441.50
64.69
376.81
TNW
Mean
1 SD
-1 SD
3;0-3;5
4.22
0.84
3.37
3;6-3;11
5.26
0.98
4.28
4;0-4;5
5.65
1.32
4.33
4;6-4;11
5.94
0.88
5.07
5;0-5;11
6.67
1.34
5.33
6;0-6;11
6.90
1.35
5.55
7;0-7;11
8.36
1.19
7.17
8;-8;11
9.67
1.53
8.14
MLU
Mean
1 SD
-1 SD
3;0-3;5
4.98
0.79
4.19
3;6-3;11
6.04
1.02
5.03
4;0-4;5
6.29
1.25
5.04
4;6-4;11
6.72
0.81
5.91
5;0-5;11
7.25
1.16
6.09
6;0-6;11
7.51
1.26
6.25
7;0-7;11
8.70
1.24
7.47
8;-8;11
9.76
1.23
8.53
W/S
Mean
1 SD
-1 SD
3;0-3;5
1.06
0.06
1.00
3;6-3;11
1.13
0.08
1.05
4;0-4;5
1.17
0.10
1.07
4;6-4;11
1.19
0.07
1.12
5;0-5;11
1.28
0.13
1.16
6;0-6;11
1.29
0.09
1.21
7;0-7;11
1.40
0.17
1.23
8;-8;11
1.58
0.20
1.38
C/S
Mean
1 SD
-1 SD
3
DEMO1(42months)
1. Let me climb in there
2. So I could hide
3. I found something
4. Dinosaur flat racer
5. Turns into truck
6. You zoom it then it pops
7. I’ll show you
8. Oh you…
9. You’re supposed to do it on tile
10. It popped
11. Pop goes the weasel
12. Pop goes aaaa
13. Now you try to catch it
14. No you have to do it to me now
15. Push it back down and roll it
16. Oh I crashed
17. Yeah
18. Come on!
19. You better catch it
20. I’m going to run
21. Here
22. Okay do it over here
23. Put the truck over here
24. No you got to push it
25. No it did
26. Now go
27. It went through the couch
28. The couch is very bouncy for this
29. Yeah it still works
30. Watch it go
31. Watch it jump over aaaa
32. No
33. Why does it always pop over here
34. It has to pop right over here
35. I don’t know
36. I don’t know you have to restart it
37. We should go
38. Go in my bedroom
39. No we have to take care of our home
40. This is our home
41. Yeah
42. Shut the door
43. We shut the door so the dinosaur won’t come in
44. Yeah
45. Hey
46. It’s twelve six o’clock
47. We’re going to do some fun things now
48. What I…
49. What I could find
50. Look
DEMO 2 (67 months)
1. Yeah
2. Actually Victor, my friend, he’s always there and I always see him there
3. Then yesterday I saw Victor and went up to him and I said Victor
4. I hugged him and sister said oh you have another girlfriend
5. I am not his girlfriend
6. I’m coloring all of the lipsticks pink
7. This one
8. I like this bear
9. I don’t know
10. Actually there is a tag and his name is Scribbles
11. I like him
12. This is hot pink
13. My favorite color is hot pink
14. This’s a computer
15. Oh and I almost forgot this one
16. I got a little bit of markers on my hands
17. Yeah
18. Well I got happy feet
19. That game we were playing before.
20. I know how to spell XXX
21. Look
22. My last name is XXX and my middle name is XXX
1
23. And you can take this bag off and wear it
24. But it’s a little small
25. Yea mine didn’t come with one that matches
26. It didn’t come with this; it came with these markers
27. It came with these sunglasses
28. Here
29. I want to color the lipstick I started today
30. I want to color the whole thing, well maybe
31. I have to finish this
32. I didn’t buy her anything ‘cause I didn’t get to the store
33. Dad buys my mom presents but I forget what they are
34. Well my favorite thing to do is play on the playground
35. I want to be a teacher
36. A science teacher, well if I know science
37. I want to be a teacher
38. Yeah because if we don’t have an Earth we wouldn’t live anywhere
39. Victor, he doesn’t live by me
40. Victor is fun and cute
41. In fact he even got haircut
42. He was cool and got a haircut
43. And every day he gets these doggie treat things
44. Not real dog treat ones
45. Not the one that Max eats.
2
46. He brings a bag of them because he wants a dog to come into the room
47. But that can’t even come true
48. If my Maxie came into the school
49. Yeah, grey dog
50. He is cute but he’s not scary looking
3
DEMO 3 (52 months)
1. Where is princess
2. What is that
3. So we can beep it so it can spin
4. So it can do this
5. Spin it
6. Where is blankey
7. No
8. Oh food
9. My pillow
10. Where is blankey
11. What do you want to eat
12. Then maybe you should’ve cook it
13. Bring it in the oven
14. We need plate
15. Where’s pizza plate
16. We got to time it
17. Where’s the timer
18. Maybe I could time
19. Can I do it
20. Where is it
21. Does it open
22. Can I cook it
23. Yea
24. So you can eat it
25. Maybe it
26. I can do it
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
Can we call somebody
How you take pictures
Do movie
What is it
I can see it
We going to put it
I can put it
Put it in here
Why
Is that you
Who is this
My friend
Is this song
Will it come on
Can you turn it
Can I turn it up
Bobblehead
Then go
I don’t want to go
I want play with you
Where you going
I want play with that
I want play with that ball
We can put in what’s this