LSA process

Rhea Paul, PhD, CCC-SLP Sacred Heart University Rhea received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981, and has taught language development and disorders in children for over 30 years. You probably know her as the author of the quintessential textbook: Language Disorders from Infancy Through Adolescence. Her latest projects include her podcast, Let’s Talk About Super Special K...

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You mean, I can’t just record the language sample right into SALT? When talking with people new to SALT I frequently hear, “Oh, I have to transcribe the sample? Can’t I just record into SALT?” There is typically a look of disappointment when I reply that the speech recognition software available to us today just isn’t accurate enough for our purposes. The goal of LSA is to document functional,...

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COVID-19 has thrown service providers more curveballs than Sandy Koufax - or for the younger folk - Andy Pettitte. Many of us SLPs had to abruptly (and maybe uncomfortably) shift from face-to-face to telepractice as a service delivery model. Thankfully, today’s technology offers a work-around.  ASHA’s practice portal on telepractice states, “Assessment and therapy procedures and materials ...

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Hey, So in day # “I don’t even know” of this new normal, this is what I’ve noticed! My son fronts /k/ and /g/ initial positions and it’s driving me crazy, even though he just turned two. #relaxslpmom. Online yoga is not my jam because I end up in child’s pose the whole time and slacking like crazy.  I think my dog is tired of us all being home. Nope, still don’t like running.  ...

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This article is based on a telephone conversation between Sally Miles, Ph.D., CCC-SLP and Karen Andriacchi M.S., CCC-SLP. The conversation was a follow-up to the language sample transcription [by SALT Services] and the analysis [by Sally using SALT software] of the Brendan Dassey interrogations made famous by the Netflix documentary, “Making A Murderer”. The first half of the interview (today’s...

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First and foremost, I have to say thank you to my very dear friend Mari Bliss. Mari and I carpooled to and from work 4-5 days a week for 2 hours a day. Mari challenged me personally and professionally, taught me and all of the district SLPs how to use SALT, and she advocated for the purchase of SALT for bilingual speech language pathologists in my district. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be ...

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 Why don’t you use language sample analysis in your practice? “It takes too much time.” “The results are difficult to interpret.” “It’s just hard to learn how to do it.”   “The whole process is too difficult.” Sound familiar? I promise you, it’s not as bad as you think. There are a lot of misconceptions and outdated ideas about language sample analysis floating around out there. So ...

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Language sample analysis: time consuming and complicated. Maybe. But it’s also one of the most effective diagnostic and monitoring tools SLPs have to help our clients. I have dedicated the last 30-odd years of my life to researching language sample analysis, striving to make it both easier and more effective for SLPs to use in their practice. Today I’d like to share with you why I am so committ...

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