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

Download these Sample Audio Files to Begin:

Audio Sample 1 - Frog Goes to Dinner (TELL)

Audio Sample 2 - Frog Goes to Dinner (RETELL)

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

After launching the Language Sample tool:

Type in the name of the book you used. In this case use the example:
- Frog, Where Are You?
Click Save
Capture or Upload a Story

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:

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

🪄 Within moments, your transcript appears automatically.

This eliminates:

Manual transcription
Repeated playback
Time-intensive formatting

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 1: Starting a Language Sample Analysis and Adding a Story

Step 2: Review the Transcription

Once the transcript appears, you can:

Read the full transcription
Play the audio alongside the text
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.

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 2: Reviewing the Transcript

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: Frog Where Are You?

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 3: Analyze the Narrative Components

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

Click Save when finished.

Step 4: Analyze Grammar & Language (Microstructure)

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 4: Analyze the Grammar Elements

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.

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.

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.

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 6: Make an Informed Professional Judgment

Step 7: Create a RETELL Narrative (When Needed)

A Story Retell is having a child tell a second story with a different book 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
Second-language influence
True language impairment

If a child has limited narrative experience or second-language influence is present, the second story is typically much longer and more complex.

If a true language impairment is present, both TELL and RETELL are largely identical, despite the child having had practice and an example.

How to Add a Retell

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

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 7: Creating a RETELL Narrative

Step 8: Analyze the Story ReTell

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
Minimal change → strong indicator of impairment

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: Frog Goes to Dinner Script

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 8: Analyze the Story ReTell

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. The difference between the stories was:

I am not concerned. One or both of the stories were long and complex.
There were improvements between the first and second story. But I'm still concerned and I still may recommend services.
I am concerned there was largely no improvement between these two stories. Despite having heard an example, having had the experience of telling the first story.

This analysis helps you qualify whether a child has language difficulties because if a child hasn't just had experience telling a story or their second language is stronger, it is really obvious. Even if you can't speak the second language, the size and the complexity of these stories stand out.

In this video we will look at some examples and then rate the tutorial story.

🎥 Video Tutorial Step 9: How to Use Professional Judgement to Analyze and Compare Two Language Samples

Step 10: Generate a Language Sample Analysis Report

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

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