No abstract

The NSS is an efficient and informative tool for documenting children's development of narrative macrostructure. The relationship between the NSS and microstructural measures demonstrates that it is a robust measure of children's overall oral narrative competence and a powerful tool for clinicians and researchers. The unique relationship between lexical diversity and the NSS confirmed that a special relationship exists between vocabulary and narrative organization skills in young school-age children.

This article examines the question: Do lexical, syntactic, fluency, and discourse measures of oral language collected under narrative conditions predict reading achievement both within and across languages for bilingual children? More than 1,500 Spanish-English bilingual children attending kindergarten-third grade participated. Oral narratives were collected in each language along with measures of Passage Comprehension and Word Reading Efficiency. Results indicate that measures of oral language in Spanish predict reading scores in Spanish and that measures of oral language skill in English predict reading scores in English. Cross-language comparisons revealed that English oral language measures predicted Spanish reading scores and Spanish oral language measures predicted English reading scores beyond the variance accounted for by grade. Results indicate that Spanish and English oral language skills contribute to reading within and across languages.

Language sample analysis remains a powerful method of documenting language use in everyday speaking situations. A sample of talking reveals an individual's ability to meet specific speaking demands. These demands vary across contexts, and speakers can have difficulty in any one or all of these communication tasks. Language use for spoken communication is a foundation for literacy attainment and contributes to success in navigating relationships for school, work, and community participation.

Implications for the efficient use of language sample analysis in clinical protocols are discussed. A framework for eliciting reliable short samples is provided.