Language Sample Preparation 

From the SUGAR website

TRANSCRIPT COLLECTION: SUGAR ROBUST SAMPLING

Collect only 10 minutes of conversation. This amount of time should be more than enough.

The most important aspect of talking with the child is to avoid as many yes/no or product (one-word answer) questions as possible and to ask process question (How did/do…) or use “Tell me…” or “I wonder…” statements. Practice before collecting.

Turnabouts = Comment + Cue for child to talk

Process Questions

How did…

What happened…

Tell me…

I wonder what you…

Why did…

More than one-word “why” questions

Not appropriate for kids below 4.5 yrs

Use narrative elicitations instead of yes/no questions

Build on what the child says or on what you know

Begin with…

Your mom says you…. That sounds like fun. Tell me what happened.

I know that you…. Tell me what happened.

Did you ever…. Tell me what you did.

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SUGAR RAPID TRANSCRIPTION

Transcribe the sample directly onto your computer. Only type the child’s utterances, NOT yours. Do NOT include identifying data. Remember that an utterance is a sentence or less, separated by a pause, drop in voice, inhalation or combination of these. Do not belabor the process of utterance determination. Stop when you have 50 utterances.

PROCEDURES FOR TRANSCRIBING (Think speed!)

•   Type in plain English as spoken.

•   Omit immediate child imitations of the other speaker.

•   Highlight all utterances that are imperative or elliptical so when you analyze each you will know that some information has been omitted by the child.

•   Omit punctuation to save time.

•   Do NOT embellish the child’s utterance. In other words, don’t add morphemes that are missing.

•   Type words in full even when pronunciation omits portions as follows:

o   Talkin’ should be transcribed as “Talking”

o   Gonna, wanna, gotta, hafta should be transcribed as “going to, want to, got to, have to”

•   Type contractions as is. In other words, don’t should be typed as “don’t” and I’m as “I’m”

•   Do NOT include fillers (uhhhh, ummm, like, you know)

•   Do NOT include disfluences. Only include the fullest form of what the child actually said. Example: “He said…he says…he tell me secrets” becomes “He tell me secrets.”

•   Do NOT include repeated words unless it is for emphasis, as in “He went down down down in the cave.”

•   Don’t spend an inordinate amount of time deciphering unintelligible utterances. If the entire utterance is unintelligible, omit it. If a word is unintelligible, type nonsense, such as “XX” in place of the word. If an utterance contains two or more unintelligible words, omit the entire utterance.

•   If an utterance contains more than two clauses joined with and, consider it a run-on sentence and divide as follows:

We went to the circus and I saw clowns and there were elephants and I got this sweet sticky stuff.but I didn’t like it so I gave it to my sister.

      Becomes…

We went to the circus and I saw clowns.

There were elephants and I got this sweet sticky stuff but I didn’t like it so I gave it to my sister.

An utterance has only one “and” joining clauses. Do NOT do this with other conjunctions. Note in the previous example that the initial “and” was omitted in the second utterance.

Stop at 50 utterances. Save the document.  Come out of your document. Hit Control-S for PC or Command-S for Apple/Mac to save.