Procedures for Obtaining and Analyzing Writing Samples of School-Age Children and Adolescents

Abstract

SLPs can readily implement many techniques for obtaining and analyzing writing samples. The information in this article provides SLPs with recommendations for the use of writing samples and may help increase SLPs' confidence regarding written language assessment.

Language Variation in the Writing of African American Students: Factors Predicting Reading Achievement

“…In the present work, findings suggest that written language productivity (Price & Jackson, 2015) and dialectneutral ungrammatical forms are reflective of general underlying language ability. Production of longer written narratives suggests more fluent and less effortful writing, which in turn reflects stronger underlying expressive language skills.…”

“…Undergraduate students enrolled in the speech-language pathology major typed the written samples into electronic transcript files. Transcripts were then formatted using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software and conventions ( Miller & Iglesias, 2017 ), and segmented into t-units by undergraduate research assistants following conventions of segmenting writing samples ( Price & Jackson, 2015 ). All research assistants received training in SALT transcription and segmentation and demonstrated at least 90% reliability with the first author on word-by-word transcription, t-unit segmentation, and SALT conventions on practice transcripts.…”

“…Mean length of t-unit, a measure analogous to mean length of utterance that quantifies morphosyntactic complexity, was computed by dividing the number of total morphemes in a sample by the total number of completed t-units in the sample. TNU, another measure of transcript length, was obtained by summing the number of t-units ( Price & Jackson, 2015 ).…”

Relationship Between Performance on Oral Narrative Retells and Vocabulary Assessments for Spanish-English Speaking Children

“…When analyzing the microstructure of language samples, MLU and NDW are a commonly used index of language maturity and are thought to reflect lexical diversity (Miller, Andriacchi, & Nockerts, 2015). NDW is reportedly the most commonly used language sample measures to assess lexical diversity (J. R. Price, Jackson, Nippold, & Ward-Lonergan, 2015) and is utilized in child language research as an index of language maturity to differentiate children with and without language learning disorders (Thordardottir & Namazi, 2007), to monitor oral language proficiency in DLLs (Jacobson & Walden, 2013), and to monitor progress in the language development of children with language disorders (Ertmer, Strong, & Sadagopan, 2003).…”

Relationship Between Children’s Lexical Diversity in Written Narratives and Performance on a Standardized Reading Vocabulary Measure

“…NDW has also been identified as a measure to monitor oral language proficiency in dual language learners (Jacobson & Walden, 2013) and to progress monitor language development in children after cochlear implantation (Ertmer, Strong, & Sadagopan, 2003). When analyzing written language samples, NDW is reportedly the most common measure used in assessing lexical diversity (Price & Jackson, 2015); however, less research has been conducted on its use in written samples.…”