What This Worksheet Is For
Language sample analysis (LSA) is the gold-standard descriptive method for evaluating a child's expressive language. Unlike standardized tests, LSA captures real, connected speech in a natural context. The bottleneck is transcription: a clinician sits down with an audio recording, listens utterance by utterance, writes each one out, counts the morphemes, judges grammaticality, and only then computes MLU, PGU, NDW, and clausal density.
This worksheet is the structured scaffold for that transcription pass. Five columns line up exactly with the data the standard LSA metrics need:
- # — utterance number, 1 through your selected row count.
- Transcription — the child's utterance as you hear it on the recording.
- Morphemes — Brown's-rule morpheme count for that utterance.
- Grammatical (Y/N) — your judgment of whether the utterance is fully grammatical.
- Notes — errors, repairs, contextual cues, or codes.
Filling the sheet in row-by-row is the slow, careful part of LSA. Once it is complete you can compute MLU as `total morphemes / total utterances`, PGU as `grammatical utterances / total utterances`, and feed the same row data into other tools in the suite.
How to Use This Worksheet
1. Set the row count. Pick 25, 50, 75, or 100 rows based on your protocol. SUGAR and Miller & Chapman use 50; Brown's original work used 100; quick screenings use 25.
2. Fill in the header. Type the child's ID or initials, age, date of sample, and clinician name. The header prints with the worksheet so the form lives next to the rest of the chart.
3. Transcribe utterance by utterance. Use the audio recording (or live notes) and write one utterance per row. Punctuate sparingly. The "Transcription" column is wide enough for typical 8 – 12 word utterances.
4. Count morphemes. Apply Brown's morpheme counting rules and put the integer in the "Morphemes" column. The running total at the top of the worksheet updates as you type.
5. Mark grammaticality. Click the "G" or "U" toggle for each utterance to indicate Grammatical or Ungrammatical (or leave both unselected if you have not judged it). The PGU running total updates as you mark rows.
6. Print or save as PDF. When you finish, click "Print Worksheet". The print stylesheet hides the toolbar, the educational sidebar, and the ConductSpeech card so the printed page contains only the header and the rows. To save, choose "Save as PDF" in the print dialog.
Where the Worksheet Fits in the LSA Workflow
1. Record. Capture 10–15 minutes of conversational or play-based interaction with the child.
2. Transcribe. Use this worksheet, one utterance per row, until you reach your target sample size (50 utterances is the most common cut-off).
3. Compute MLU. Move the morpheme totals into the MLU Calculator for a fully checked MLU‑morphemes and MLU‑words computation.
4. Compute PGU. If you marked grammaticality on the worksheet, transfer those judgments into the PGU Calculator to get Percent Grammatical Utterances and an error-type breakdown.
5. Compute lexical diversity. Paste the same transcribed text into the Lexical Diversity Calculator for Type‑Token Ratio (TTR) and Number of Different Words (NDW).
6. Compare to age norms. Use the SUGAR Norms Lookup to compare your computed MLU, TNW, CPS, and MLUL against age-matched typical ranges.
7. Speed it up. If hand-transcription is the bottleneck, ConductSpeech does steps 1–6 from a single audio upload — transcript, metrics, normative comparison, and a clinical report.
