Reference Databases
We added more language samples to the reference databases and included some new databases for you to use for comparison.
• One conversation database. We combined the Wisconsin and San Diego conversation databases and added a few more samples. The Conversation database contains samples from 613 subjects, ages 2;8 - 13;3.
• More samples! 97 story retell narratives, collected in Madison , have been added to the San Diego story retells resulting in the Narrative Story Retell database. There are now 346 story retell samples elicited from children in grades K-4, ranging in age from 4;4 - 10;0 .
• More samples! 1,272 story retell narratives, collected in Texas and California , have been added to the Bilingual English/Spanish Story Retell databases ( previously named the TX ELL databases ). There are now English and Spanish story-retell narratives from over 2,000 native Spanish-speaking bilingual (Spanish/English) children in grades K-3, ranging in age from 5;0 - 9;9.
• New databases! Samples from over 200 children, ages 4;5 - 7;7, were collected from several areas of New Zealand resulting in three new databases: New Zealand Conversation , New Zealand Personal Narrative , and New Zealand Story Retell .
All of the SALT databases are free. They are included with SALT 2008 but you may download thm for use with SALT V7, V8 and V9. Read more about these databases and download the ones you're interested in.
NSS and SI Analyses
The Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) and Subordination Index (SI) analyses have been applied to all of the samples in the Narrative Story Retell database and the Bilingual Spanish/English databases.
• The Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS)
is an assessment tool developed to create a more objective narrative structure scoring system. Based upon early work on story grammar analysis by Stein and Glenn, 1979, 1982, this scoring procedure combines many of the abstract categories of story grammar, adding features of cohesion, connecting events, rationale for characters' behavior and referencing. Score your language sample for NSS and compare the results to samples selected from the database.
• The Subordination Index (SI)
is a measure of syntactic complexity which produces a ratio of the total number of clauses (main and subordinate) to the number of C-units. The SI scores consist of utterance codes, [SI-0], [SI-1], [SI-2], etc., inserted at the end of each qualifying C-unit. Score your language sample for SI and compare the results to samples selected from the database.
Other Changes
We've added a few new measurements, fixed a few glitches, relabeled some of the menus to make them more intuitive, revised the built in help system, and updated the documentation. |
