The Bus Story Language Test (C. Renfrew, 1991) appears to be an assessment tool that is sensitive to structural growth in African American children's narratives from 4 years to kindergarten entry.

There was not a significant relationship between children's early OME history or HL and language skills during the preschool years. However, children with more frequent OME had lower scores on school readiness measures. These associations were moderate in degree, however, and the home environment was more strongly related to academic outcomes than was OME or HL. These results should be interpreted cautiously when generalizing to other populations.

This study examined changes in the complex syntax production of 85 3- and 4-year-old African American children and the role of child (i.e., gender, age, African American English) and family (i.e., home environment) factors. The mean percentage of utterances containing one or more complex syntax forms was 6.2% at 3 years and 11.7% at 4 years. Girls produced more complex syntax forms than did boys. Complex syntax production increased significantly between age 3 and age 4 and correlated positively with mean length of utterance in words. Children from more responsive and stimulating home environments produced more complex syntax at 4 years. African American English was not related to the amount of complex syntax used.

SLPs can readily implement many techniques for obtaining and analyzing writing samples. The information in this article provides SLPs with recommendations for the use of writing samples and may help increase SLPs' confidence regarding written language assessment.

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