How to Conduct a Language Sample Analysis Using ELSA

Evaluation Language Sample Analysis (ELSA) Tutorial

Welcome!

Follow along with this step-by-step guide while we show you how to go from recording a language sample to creating a report in minutes. Simply watch these short video segments and complete each step. 

⏱️ Most users complete a full Tell + Retell analysis in 10–15 minutes.

🎥 Video Tutorial Overview: Introduction and Audio Download

How to Conduct a Language Sample Analysis Using ELSA

ELSA (Evaluation Language Sample Analysis) is a fast, accurate, and clinically powerful way to collect, transcribe, analyze, and report on oral language samples.

With ELSA, you can:

• Record or upload a child’s language sample
• Automatically generate a transcription
• Easily edit the transcript
• Analyze narrative and grammatical components
• Calculate MLU and utterance measures
• Compare a Tell and Retell story
• Generate a professional, evaluation-ready report

Download these 2 Sample Audio Files to Begin:

Audio Sample 1 - Frog Goes to Dinner (TELL)

Audio Sample 2 - Frog Goes to Dinner (RETELL)

(In Safari, click Control while clicking on the audio file to download the files.)

Once you have downloaded the two audio files click on:

Eventually Adding or Choosing a Client

Note that during this tutorial we have chosen your client for you (Tommy Test). When you are doing your first language sample you will: 

1. Select Add Language Sample.
2. Choose the client you want to work with or enter a new one. You’ll see a box where you can type your client’s name. If your client is already in the Evalubox system, you will be able to select them. If they are not in the system, you will be prompted to create a file for them. You will enter their name, date of birth, gender, and pronouns. 

Now we are ready to get started!

Step 1: Start a New Language Sample and Capture or Upload a Story

After launching the Language Sample tool:

1. Type in the name of the book you used. In this case use the example: 
   • Frog, Where Are You?
2. Click Save
3. Capture or Upload a Story
4. Click Transcribe this sample

There are two ways you can add a story recording to ELSA. You can:

• Record directly on your phone or computer
• Upload an existing audio file

Most SLPs start by uploading files they recorded on another device and that’s what we will do here. Know that this is an extra step though and may require you to maintain a file on a personal or unsecure device. Once you get the hang of it, you can record directly into ELSA. For this tutorial example:

1. Upload AudioSample1 for Frog, Where Are You?
2. Wait briefly for processing

🪄 Within moments, your transcript appears automatically.

This eliminates:

• Manual transcription
• Repeated playback
• Time-intensive formatting

Step 2: Review the Transcription

Once the transcript appears, you can:

• Read the full transcription
• Play the audio alongside the text
• identify clinician utterances
• Identify mazes (repetitions) within the transcript
• Confirm readiness for analysis

Take a minute and edit a piece of the transcript. Press play to listen along and edit or delete a word. Maybe even mark an articulation error. When ready, click Analyze.

Step 3: Analyze the Narrative Components of the Story or Conversational Sample 

The Story Analysis section walks you through how to identify macrostructure (narrative components), microstructure (grammar components), and pragmatic use. 

If you are not familiar with the Mercer Meyer story: Frog Where Are You?, you can download it here so that you understand what should be in the story and what is missing. 

Download PDF Script: Frog Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer

Let’s start with the narrative aspects of the story and how well the child included the essential story elements such as:

• Setting
• Characters
• Initiating events
• Temporal sequencing
• Cohesive elements
• Attempts and outcomes
• Resolution
• Emotional responses
• Implicit intentions

You’ll mark:

• What was clearly present
• What was attempted
• What was absent

Step 4: Analyze Grammar & Language (Microstructure)

Next, ELSA guides you through an analysis of the grammatical components of the story. In this section you will study the child’s production looking for: 

Semantics

• Nouns
• Verbs
• Pronouns (including errors)
• Adjectives

Morphology

• Plurals
• Articles
• Verb tense
• Subject-verb agreement

Syntax

• Simple sentences
• Compound sentences
• Complex sentences
• Sentence completeness and grammaticality

You’ll also be prompted to note patterns or concerns.

Step 5: Analyze Social & Pragmatic Language

Language samples also need to be assessed for the pragmatic and social language that is used to tell a story. Some stories can be grammatically complex and contain a variety of narrative components and still be difficult to understand based on the organization of the events or unexpected additions. Here you’ll consider:

• Topic maintenance
• Relevance to the story
• Inclusion of appropriate details
• Whether the child described what was visually present

This helps differentiate language difficulty from attention, experience, or cultural factors.

Step 6: Make an Informed Professional Judgment

No matter how advanced technology gets, the role of the SLP is still needed to pull all of the pieces together to make an informed judgement about the complexity of communication, relative to a child’s age. This section captures your clinical reasoning.

First, you’ll decide whether you thought the language sample was what you expected or not by selecting one of these options:

• The child produced a robust language sample. I am confident that it is age-appropriate.
• The language sample was not at the level I expected.

If you pick the first one, you will move on to the report. If you choose the second one, you will have the option to upload or record a second language sample or continue on to the report.

Your selections directly inform the final report summary.

Step 7: Begin a Second Language Sample (ReTell) When Needed

A second language sample or “Story Retell” is having a child tell a second story so that we can account for no experience telling a story, rule out second language influence, or truly home in on language difficult. It is necessary if the first story that the child told (without a model) is not typical. Here’s what it looks like:

• The clinician models a story
• The child retells the same story (or a similar one)

This helps distinguish:

• Limited narrative experience
• Lack of understanding of the task
• True language impairment

If a child has limited narrative experience or a lack of understanding of the initial task, the second story is typically much longer and more complex. 

If a true language impairment is present, both the first and second language sample are largely identical, despite the child having had practice and an example. When you are collecting only one language sample, your work is complete at this point and you would go on to viewing and printing the report. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will initiate a second language sample and then compare the two. 

How to Begin a Second Language Sample

1. Select Start Second Language Sample
2. Choose a second story (e.g., Frog Goes to Dinner)
3. Record or upload the audio from the second story
4. Review the new transcript
5. Complete the same analysis steps

Step 8: Analyze the Second Language Sample

The analysis of a Retell is identical to the analysis of a the tell. You will judge the story based on:

• Narrative complexity
• Grammatical growth
• Sentence length
• Overall organization
• Pragmatic appropriateness. 

This will give us the information we need to better support eligibility decisions because patterns become immediately visible:

• Large improvement → experience or language exposure may have affected the first story’s complexity. 
• Minimal change → strong indicator of impairment

We used a different book for the story retell in this case. If you are not familiar with the Mercer Mayer story Frog Goes to Dinner, download this script to see what the child would have been expected to include after having heard this model: Frog Goes to Dinner Script

Download PDF Script: Frog Goes to Dinner by Mercer Mayer

Step 9: Professional Judgment with Both Stories

When judging the growth of a story we now have more options because we have a second sample that was recorded after the child saw how it was done. Then we use our professional judgment to decide:

• One or both of the language samples were long and complex. 
• There were improvements between the first and second story, but I am still concerned about the results and may make recommendations for services when taking their results into consideration with other data. 
• I am concerned. There was largely no improvement between the two language samples, despite having heard an example, and/or receiving instruction.

This analysis and comparison between the two stories helps demonstrate whether a child has language difficulties. Typically, when a child simply lacks experience telling a story the second language sample is more robust. Sometimes a child might tell their second story in a different language. Even if you don’t speak their home language, ELSA will translate the story for you to review with a native speaker. You might see that their story is much stronger in one language than the other.

Step 10: Generate and Print the Language Sample Analysis Summary

Step 10 is the easiest because there is nothing left to do! Generate your summary, read through the results, print them as an independent analysis, or include them in the non-standardized portion of your report. 

Click View Report to generate a professional, evaluation-ready text that includes:

• Explanation of why one or two stories were elicited
• Narrative and grammatical summaries
• Side-by-side story comparisons
• MLU and utterance metrics
• Your professional judgment selections
• Clear clinical language ready for reports

This way, ELSA does not make eligibility decisions for you, it documents and supports your expert judgment.