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
  • Analyze narrative and grammatical components
  • Calculate MLU and utterance measures
  • Compare a Tell and Retell story
  • Generate a professional, evaluation-ready report

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

🎥 Video Tutorial


Sample Files

Step 1: Start a New Language Sample

After launching the Language Sample tool:

  1. Choose a story stimulus
    • Example: Frog, Where Are You?
  2. Select the wordless picture book
  3. Click Save

You’re now ready to capture or upload a language sample.

Step 2: Capture or Upload the Story

You can:

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

For this tutorial example:

  1. Upload AudioSample1   for Frog, Where Are You?
  2. Wait briefly for processing
  3. Click Refresh if needed

🪄 Within moments, your transcript appears automatically.

This eliminates:

  • Manual transcription
  • Repeated playback
  • Time-intensive formatting

Step 3: Review the Transcription

Once the transcript appears, you can:

  • Read the full transcription
  • Play the audio alongside the text
  • Confirm readiness for analysis

When ready, click Analyze.

Step 4: Analyze Narrative (Macrostructure)

The Narrative section walks you through identifying 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

This guided process mirrors expert clinical reasoning and ensures consistency across evaluations.

Click Save when finished.

Step 5: Analyze Grammar & Language (Microstructure)

Next, ELSA guides you through grammatical components, including:

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 6: Review MLU & Utterance Measures

ELSA automatically calculates:

  • Total number of utterances
  • Total words
  • Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)

You can view:

  • Utterance-by-utterance breakdown
  • First 10 utterances summary
  • Overall language complexity metrics

Click Save to continue.

Step 7: Analyze Social & Pragmatic Use

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 8: Professional Judgment

This section captures your clinical reasoning.

You’ll answer questions such as:

  • Was the story rich and complete?
  • Was performance questionable?
  • Do concerns remain after analysis?

Your selections directly inform the final report narrative.

Step 9: Add a Retell (When Needed)

If the first story raises questions, ELSA supports a Retell.

What Is a Retell?

  • The clinician models a story
  • The child retells the same story (or a similar one)
  • This helps distinguish:
    • Limited narrative experience
    • Second-language influence
    • True language impairment

How to Add a Retell

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

Step 10: Compare Tell vs. Retell

ELSA automatically compares:

  • Narrative complexity
  • Grammatical growth
  • Sentence length
  • Overall organization

Patterns become immediately visible:

  • Large improvement → experience or language exposure
  • Minimal change → strong indicator of impairment

This comparison strongly supports eligibility decisions and diagnostic confidence.

Step 11: Generate the Report

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

  • Explanation of Tell vs. Retell
  • Narrative and grammatical summaries
  • Side-by-side story comparisons
  • MLU and utterance metrics
  • Your professional judgment selections
  • Clear clinical language ready for reports

⚠️ ELSA does not make eligibility decisions for you — it documents and supports your expert judgment.

Why Use ELSA?

✔️ Eliminates manual transcription

✔️ Supports bilingual and monolingual evaluations

✔️ Accounts for culture and experience

✔️ Produces defensible, non-standardized assessment data

✔️ Ideal for evaluations, reevaluations, and progress monitoring

ELSA turns one of the most powerful assessment tools in our field into a fast, repeatable, and report-ready process.

If you need help getting started or have questions about using ELSA in your evaluations, our support team is here to help.

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