New Reference Databases

•  New Expository database for older students! This database consists of expository samples from 87 typically developing English-fluent students, ages 12;7 - 15;9. These middle and high school students are from public schools located in Wisconsin. The samples were elicited following a defined script which asked the student to explain a game or sport of his/her choosing. The protocol included giving the student a few minutes to take notes on a planning sheet which contained the following eight topics: object, preparations, start, course of play, rules, scoring, duration, and strategies. The student was then asked to explain the game or sport using the planning sheet.

•  New ENNI database from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI) is an assessment tool for collecting language information from children aged 4 to 9 through storytelling. Pictures that portray a story are presented to a child, who then tells the story to the examiner. Picture sets were drawn for the ENNI by a professional cartoonist; they range from a simple story with 2 characters to a complex story with 4 characters. These pictures and detailed administration and transcription instructions may be downloaded from the ENNI web site at www.rehabmed.ualberta.ca/spa/enni.

All of the SALT databases are free. They are included with SALT 2010 but they may be downloaded for use with SALT V7, V8, V9, and 2008. Read more about these databases and download the ones you're interested in.

SI, NSS, and ESS Applied to Reference Database Samples

•  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. The SI coding was applied to all the samples in the following reference databases: Conversation, Narrative Story Retell, Narrative SSS, Expository, and Bilingual English/Spanish Story Retell.

•  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. The NSS coding was applied to all the samples in the Narrative Story Retell and Bilingual English/Spanish Story Retell databases.

•  The Expository Scoring Scheme (ESS) assesses the structure of expository language, a critical language skill in secondary curriculum, using a scoring rubric consisting of the essential characteristics of a coherent expository. These characteristics include: 1) object, 2) preparations, 3) start, 4) course of play, 5) rules, 6) scoring, 7) duration, 8) strategies, 9) terminology, and 10) cohesion. The ESS coding was applied to all the samples in the new Expository database.

SI, NSS, and ESS Added to the SALT Menus

•  Routines have been added to the Edit menu to aid in scoring SI, NSS, and ESS. When coding for SI, each utterance is highlighted and you select the appropriate SI code from a list. When coding for NSS and ESS, the plus lines used for scoring are added to the end of your transcript.

• Score your language samples for SI, NSS, and ESS, and compare the results to samples selected from the reference databases. SI, NSS, and ESS analyses have been added to the Analyze and Database menus.

Research Version: Extract Language Measures from Samples Stored in the SALT Databases

Use the "Rectangular Data File" tool to extract language measures from samples stored in any of the SALT databases, those that come with the software or those you create from your own samples.

Other Changes

We've added a few new measurements, fixed a few glitches, reorganized the Database and Setup menus to make them more intuitive, added the User Guide as a pdf file to all versions, and updated the documentation.