Teaching · Speech & Language

Type the sample. The counts follow the rules.

One row per utterance, X for a word you could not catch, parentheses for false starts. The assistant leaves out what should be left out and counts the rest.

Transcribe a sampleWhat you get
$12one-time · every device you sign in on
Buy · $12

Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Speech & Language toolkit, $79 for 72 items.

The transcript

One transcript per student and date. The example is made up.

Loading the form. If nothing appears, turn on JavaScript.

What you get

Teaching · Speech & Language$12 · included with Classroom and Whole-school licenses

What you finish with
Utterance and word counts, mean length of utterance in words, number of different words, intelligibility, mazes and the longest utterances.
Who it is for
Speech-language pathologists, clinical fellows and graduate clinicians collecting language samples.
Format
Browser form. One saved transcript per student and date; printed with the counts or as a blank form; CSV; export and import a file.
Access
$12 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Speech & Language toolkit ($79) and the Teaching Suite pass ($199), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The Speech & Language space in Caveat Teaching.
Support
Questions about an order, access or a correction: team@caveatacademic.com.
every word, then the counts
Drawn for this page. The counts are only as good as the transcript: type what the child said, not what they meant.

How to use it

  1. Record the sample (audio, with the family’s permission) in a familiar context.
  2. Start a transcript with the student’s code and the date.
  3. Type each child utterance on its own row, exactly as said.
  4. Mark unintelligible words with X and put mazes in parentheses.
  5. Read the counts and the cautions before you report.

Transcribe a sample

How the counts are made

What is counted

Mean length and different words use complete, fully intelligible utterances only, and leave mazes out, the convention used in clinical language sampling. Words are counted, not morphemes; MLU in morphemes needs Brown’s rules applied by you.

Sample size

Short samples give unstable averages. Fifty utterances is a common minimum; longer is better. Type-token ratio falls as samples grow, so compare it only across samples of equal length.

What this is not

An automatic transcriber or a scoring system with norms. It counts what you type.

Sources

  1. Brown, R. (1973). A First Language: The Early Stages. Harvard University Press: mean length of utterance.
  2. Miller, J. F., Andriacchi, K., & Nockerts, A. (2019). Assessing Language Production Using SALT Software (3rd ed.). SALT Software: transcription conventions for mazes and unintelligible words.
  3. Heilmann, J., Nockerts, A., & Miller, J. F. (2010). Language sampling: Does the length of the transcript matter? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 41(4), 393–404.
  4. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Practice Portal: Spoken Language Disorders, assessment.

The example sample is made up. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.