288: Narrative Language Sampling – What is it and how can I use it?

Show Notes:

In this episode of SLP Coffee Talk, Hallie chats with Jacquilyn Arias—pediatric SLP and co-founder of Habla Cadabra SLP—about how narrative language sampling (NLS) can make your assessments faster, more meaningful, and way more aligned with real classroom demands. Jacquilyn breaks down why NLS is a must-have tool for busy school SLPs, how it works across languages and cultures, and which free resources (like MAIN, ENNI, and SLAM) she swears by. Plus, she shares how new-ish, objective measures like Percent Grammatical Utterances (PGU) can help you confidently distinguish between a language difference and a disorder—no fancy software required. Whether you’re brand new to NLS or just looking to level up your evals, this conversation will leave you feeling empowered, efficient, and ready to try it out.

Here's what we learned:

  • NLS saves time and gives richer data than conversational samples
  • It’s aligned with academic standards and shows real classroom impact
  • Tools like MAIN, ENNI, and SLAM are free, easy to use, and multilingual
  • Great for bilingual evals—helps tell difference vs. disorder
  • PGU is a quick, reliable measure—no special software needed
  • AI tools make transcribing faster and easier than ever
  • Even short samples can give strong, goal-driving insights
  • Start small—confidence comes with trying it out

RESOURCES

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00 Hallie: Hey there, SLP. I have a quick question for you. What if you could have just one book on your shelf that actually gets the challenges of working with middle school and high school students? Well, it's here. Well, actually, the preorder is here, but, hey, I'm so excited to let you know that my brand new book, The Secondary SLP Guide, is available for preorder. And when you preorder, you get an exclusive bonus that you won't want to miss. 

00:00:31 Hallie: It is packed with real talk strategies, quick tips, and inspiration that you can use with your middle school and high school students all year long. This is the perfect book for a book club, a grad student group, or just flipping through when you're stuck and in a IEP writing spiral. So head to speechtimefun.com/preorder or head to my Instagram and send me a DM with the word preorder, and I will send you the link so you can preorder now. And I cannot wait for you to get your hands on this book in November, but the sooner you grab it, the better the bonus.

00:01:17 Hallie: Welcome to SLP Coffee Talk, the podcast designed exclusively for speech language pathologists who work with older students, grades 4 through 12. I am your host, Hallie Sherman, your SLP behind Speech Time Fun, the Speech Retreat Conference, and the SLP Elevate membership. And I'm thrilled to bring you conversations, strategies, and insights that will give you the jolt of inspiration that you need. Whether you're tuning in during your morning commute, on a break in between sessions, or even during a well deserved relaxation time, I am here for you each and every week. Let's do this SLPs.

00:01:57 Hallie: Hey. Hey. And welcome to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. Do you want to learn more about narrative language sampling? If so, you're going to love my guest that I have here today, Jacquilyn Arias. Did I just say – okay. Welcome to the show. 

00:02:16 Jacquilyn: Thank you so much. It's really… it's a pleasure to be here. 

00:02:19 Hallie: Tell everyone listening a little bit about you and your SLP journey to what you are doing today.

00:02:24 Jacquilyn: Yeah. So I'm a pediatric speech language pathologist. I have been in the field thirteen years now. And when I first got out, I started working at a pediatric rehab center where 90% of the population were Spanish speaking, which was really exciting. It's where I met my partner at Habla Cadabra SLP, which is Pilar. And over the years, I've switched settings quite a bit. I worked at a private school for children with learning and language disorders for quite some time. They also had an attached clinic where we specialized in apraxia of speech. I worked at a bilingual language development research lab for a few years. That was really fun.

00:03:04 Jacquilyn: In the last couple of years, I've just been doing a lot of contract work, either in the public school setting and working with private clients as well. So a little bit of all over the place, but I think the big through line is that I really love working with young children as elementary age, preschoolers. Those are my jam. I also have my business, Habla Cadabra SLP with Pilar, as I mentioned, and I believe that's how we met, is through that. 

00:03:29 Hallie: Exactly. We met at TSHA this year, so it was so nice to meet you in person. So today, let me talk all about narrative language sampling and how we can utilize it to make great clinical decisions. What is it… in case we have a lot of new grads that graduated or someone is not familiar? What is it exactly?

00:03:46 Jacquilyn: Alright. So we kind of know what language sample analysis is or taking a language sample. Right? And so whenever we're doing an assessment, we don't want to only rely on just a standardized test. We're really looking at a holistic view of how this child is communicating. So we do language samples where we just kind of write down everything that the child is saying so we can kind of look and see, okay, well, how are they formulating sentences? What is their grammar like? What's their vocabulary like? Where narrative language sampling is when you're doing it with a story. And so you're either doing a story retell or you're asking them to tell their own story.

00:04:21 Hallie: Wow. And how is it different than… what are some things you can gain differently than just a regular language sample? 

00:04:28 Jacquilyn: Well, so I am really interested in the research behind narrative language sample analysis. Once somebody jokingly said, are you some sort of, like, SALT representative? Because I use SALT so often to analyze my language samples. But I think one of the things that it can be really hard for all of us is how time consuming and how large our caseloads are. And when we're trying to go and do evaluations, we don't have a lot of time. So… right? So, you know, when you do a language sample, it does take time. Right? Because you have to take the time to collect a certain number of utterances. 50 is typically what's accepted right now. It's taking at least 50 utterances from a child. You have to record it, listen to it, write it down, and then analyze it. So that can be really time consuming. If you're working with a bilingual student, sometimes you're doing that twice because you're doing it in English and then also their home language. 

00:05:23 Jacquilyn: So where narrative language sampling comes in and something that I really, really love about it is that it makes it faster. And the research has shown this too is when you have something that becomes a little bit more standardized, a little bit more structured, then you can do it more quickly, more efficiently. I'm sure you've been with a kid before where you say, okay. Like, well, you know, tell me about a movie that you've seen recently. And I'm like, I don't know. I haven't seen any movies. Or, you know, sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get, you know, the conversation out there. And it'll take you fifteen minutes to collect the conversation or to collect something like that. Whereas when you do a narrative language sample, you put a book. You can do it where, okay, I'm going to give you a model where going to I'm going to tell you a story. After the story is over, you're going to go back and you're going to tell me that same story. It's very clear what the expectation is. You have visuals to go with it. 

00:06:12 Jacquilyn: And then also with narrative language samples, you tend to get a lot deeper languages. So the type of language you use when you're telling a story is a lot richer. The sentences are usually more complex than what you would get in conversation. So we get a better idea of how the child can actually organize and put language together. And telling a narrative that's really tightly aligned with curriculum standards that we have, not only the federal ones, but then also here in the state of Texas, those as well. So we're looking at how a child is able to tell a story, how they're able to put together sentences. 

00:06:46 Jacquilyn: And what I am really passionate about too is looking at syntax because a lot of times as our children go to third and fourth grade, where they really tend to struggle if they have language disorders or math and science and being able to understand those word problems and story comprehension. And you see a lot of that within the narrative language and when you're looking at their sentence types, which you're not going to necessarily see in a conversation. 

00:07:08 Hallie: I love that. Especially in the school, we need to show how their language is impacting them academically. Instead of our conversation, using literature, literacy-based activity, you can kind of knock out two things at once. 

00:07:25 Jacquilyn: Yes. And that's what we're all about, right, is efficiency. 

00:07:29 Hallie: And we also disclose, like, we need to do more than just those standardized tests. You know, pointing it into X's and O's is not giving you enough information on how that student is doing in the classroom and how they're performing in everyday life. So having more data, more information, the better clinical decision you can make, especially with goals. I would think a language sample is going to give you so much more information on… for goal writing than those standardized tests. 

00:07:53 Jacquilyn: Oh, for sure. And then, you know, you're doing a task that they're actually going to be doing in the classroom. Some of those things that you would do on a standardized – you're never going to do that again. So it's really just a very holistic view of, like, okay, what is this child really looking like? And when I can talk to teachers about, oh, when we did this story retell, this is – then, you know, they're always nodding their heads of, like, yeah. Yeah. We're, you know, we're working on some of those things too. So it really helps with that collaboration between the classroom and then what's going on in the speech therapy room because they recognize that importance as well, and, you know, we're supporting what they're trying to work on in the classroom. 

00:08:27 Hallie: Love that. Do you have favorite and I… tool – but everyone's probably wondering, like, so what do you having them read, or what do you have you having them tell about? What do you like to use?

00:08:38 Jacquilyn: Yeah. I mean, it kind of depends on, like… if I'm doing it for a formal assessment or if I'm just kind of doing it as a screener. I do think that there's a lot of value in trying to use the same things over and over because, again, I want it to be fast for me and efficient for me when I'm transcribing and analyzing. And I also want to make sure that if I'm picking a random story that it has all the elements of a narrative so that we're getting good information. 

00:09:06 Jacquilyn: So, on my blog that we have on our website, I have listed some of the free resources that we have. So a couple that I really like is the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument or the ENNI for short. This comes from the University of Alberta. It's free. It has different sets of stories. And what I also really like about it is that it has different scoring sheets so you can look at those by both macro structures, so looking at those story elements, you know, if there's a setting, if there's a character, how well they're able to reference the character, their internal state of mind; and then it also has some for syntax as well. And it's a quick scoring sheet that you can kind of go down, and then you have objective measures that you can apply and show in your assessments as well. So that's a favorite. 

00:09:53 Jacquilyn: MAIN, which is the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for our Narratives. I hope I'm getting that one right. That one is… it's an international one. So it was developed not in the US, but it's been used a lot in research. And, well, that one in particular is available in lots of different languages. And then SLAM is one that I think – right? 

00:10:13 Hallie: I'm really familiar with the SLAM ones. Yeah.

00:10:15 Jacquilyn: Yeah. That we're really familiar with. I like those because they have them on the Boom cards so I can just keep it on my iPad. Those have scoring measures. And I'm talking about scoring measures because I do think it's really important that we are able to apply some objective measures so that we can really kind of demonstrate progress when we're working with kids or kind of really be able to quickly identify. A lot of times when I'm in the schools, I kind of are picking up kids that somebody else has had on their caseload. So if I open up their eval and, I don't know how it is where you work, but our emails are sometimes, like, 45 pages. And if it's just a lot of narrative of, like, yeah. They told a story, you know, and they answered WH questions. And they were able to tell a story, so they don't have any problems speaking English. And that's all the information I get. Like, it's really hard for me to kind of understand, okay. Well, what do I need to work on or what are some of those other issues? So I like having objective measures in the evaluations because it's something that we can all understand and can all work from. 

00:11:13 Hallie: That was so interesting. I don't even think I realized the SLAM cards had that. I like the SLAM cards because it had pictures for younger students, but then older ones. Like, the cell phone one and things like that were just, like, very age appropriate. They didn't feel like I was showing them cutesy pictures. And there and I love that and the Boom made it so much easier that I didn't even have to print them or anything. 

00:11:33 Jacquilyn: Yes. I love that. Love that. Yes.

00:11:38 Hallie: So those are the ones that I like to use. Could you share a little bit more about how neurolanguage sampling can be used across, like, the different languages and cultures? 

00:11:47 Jacquilyn: Yeah. So, I mean, all different cultures, they have their own forms of storytelling. This is a very, like, functional task. You know, a lot of times when parents come, they… you know, I say, oh, what is something that you really wish your child could do? And a lot of them are telling me, I just want my child to be able to tell me about, like, what happened that day. That's a narrative. A narrative is something that is every – right? That we want to use across different cultures. 

00:12:10 Jacquilyn: Some of the things that I really like about some of the resources that I just mentioned is that they've already been normed and translated, either developed in another language or they've been translated into another language and normed. So the MAIN is one of those. SLAM, they have a bunch of different translations as well. ENNI is developed in Canada, so it has English and French. Right? But there… a lot is available. And, I mean, just to shout out, SALT. SALT isn't a free one. But even on the SALT website, they'll have, like, the different frog stories. So those are the ones that I think all of us did in grad school. And it'll have English and Spanish audio scripts. So even if you don't use the… you don't speak that language, you can kind of play that story, show them the pictures, and then have them repeat it. 

00:12:57 Jacquilyn: So I do some consulting work at a clinic that primarily works with Portuguese speaking families. And so that one is really – No. We use the MAIN. That one has been really helpful because although I don't speak Portuguese, I can do the sample in English and do a narrative in English. And then I can, you know, train either the SLPA that's working there. I've also worked with the psychologist that's there, and she will provide the model and then collect the sample. And because there's that very clear scoring measure, then we can talk it through together, and we can kind of compare. Okay. Well, let's talk about the grammar here and get some of that insight on one of those things. So it helps me to be able to compare and see what's going on. It's more of just a lack of opportunity versus an actual language disorder. 

00:13:47 Jacquilyn: And the great thing about narrative samples too is when you're working with children that are bilingual or speaking other languages, because you already have a structure of how you're supposed to tell a story in your home language, you are providing kind of a base for a child and you can really see, okay. Well, they are able to kind of organize language, formulate things. And if it's just a grammar issue, then you're kind of able to more quickly pinpoint, well, this is just… they're still learning English versus they really haven't developed a base of how to communicate yet. 

00:14:16 Hallie: So, so interesting. Especially, you know, those of you listening that are new to working with students speaking multiple languages. It's really important to distinguish if it's a difference or a disorder. And having more information, I mean, able to analyze it and knowing the sentence structures and the – like you even said, the story frameworks is different knowing that. So, so, so interesting. What are some newish objective measures that you can use this to help discriminate between developmental language or typical developmental language that are fast and don't require, you know, SALT or special software? 

00:14:55 Jacquilyn: Right. Because usually, when we think about language sampling, we think about, okay. We have to calculate MLU or or mean length of utterance. And we have kind of seen that that isn't necessarily the best tool to use to kind of identify whether or not somebody has a language disorder or not. One that is… I say newish because it's been around for a little while, but I don't see it as often is PGU, which is Percent Grammatical Utterances. So this, I think, is really fast because what you're doing is you're just seeing how grammatical is this child's language.

00:15:25 Jacquilyn: So if you have a narrative language sample, so I might, you know, say it's thirty utterances. All I'm doing is I'm counting whether or not that one utterance on that one line is grammatical or not. So it's, you know, just one, two, three, four, five out of, you know, 25 utterances and very simple math. 5 divided by 25. Okay. You know? So when you have that PGU, the Percent Grammatical Utterances, this has been shown… a measure to be shown very sensitive and very specific in diagnosing children with language impairment versus not. Right? So we want something that has really good sensitivity and specificity, and they're showing that PGU for at least, you know, the ages that I work with, like, from four to nine, has great. So between eighty and ninety percent, which is better than a lot of standardized tests.

00:16:14 Hallie: I love this. I love that you're sharing just not only the tool, but also giving just better information. Like, the better the report, the better data that you have, the better clinical judgment you can make, better goals you can write. You want to write goals that are attainable. Can you use this, or do you use this at all with your dynamic assessment?

00:16:35 Jacquilyn: Yeah. I think for sure. So, you know, we talk about dynamic assessment when we're working with our kids, especially our bilingual kids. And dynamic assessment, you can, you know, you're working on getting the information, providing a little bit of that teaching, and then doing it again. So I think you can use it for both. I would probably look at it at the one that you do at the end, or you can even compare it if you want. They don't take – PGU does not take long to calculate at all. And using that to kind of figure out, well, okay. If there's some grammatical issues here or if there's child is struggling here, you're going to have a better idea of kind of seeing, well, was it just because they had never, you know, been exposed to that particular vocabulary word and they just needed a model of, like, how to conjugate it, or is it just consistent patterns going on? 

00:17:22 Hallie: That's so interesting. Do you have a favorite way to introduce it to make the students feel comfortable and so they know what is expected of them versus just like, tell me what's going on in this picture? What do you like to… how do you like to introduce the activity for that matter? 

00:17:37 Jacquilyn: Yeah. I mean, well, if I'm using the actual physical books, then, you know, that part, I think, is a little easier. It's more visual of, like, alright. But as I'm pulling the children for assessments, I let them know what we're going to be doing. You know, we're going to do a test. So that is going to be a book that I flip. It has a lot of pictures, and I'm going to have you, like, name what's happening. And then you're also going to tell me a story. So I prep them as they come in, and that's – I mean, telling stories is something they've been practicing in their classrooms.

00:18:08 Hallie: Do you like to do the narrative sampling before or after the standardized test? Just curious. 

00:18:12 Jacquilyn: It depends on the kid. I kind of… I like to end with it a lot of times because I do feel like, it's usually something that the child enjoys. It's a little bit more fun and relaxing, especially because I will provide the model first or the story retells. So it gives them a little bit of a break where they can just, you know, have me telling them a story and then do it back. 

00:18:33 Hallie: I know for me, I like doing those conversational icebreaker things in the beginning, and it's a great way to get some of those language sampling and noting things down. But if they are not opening up at all, I like to then bring in language sampling piece beforehand. This way, they just loosen up a little bit before taking out that book with pages of it. 

00:18:54 Jacquilyn: Right. Right. [overlap – inaudible] 

00:18:57 Hallie: Asking me my favorite color was hard enough. Have you ever tried using, like, wordless picture books in the same kind of format? 

00:19:10 Jacquilyn: Yeah. I love those on Epic. There's a couple I have a, like, a collection of wordless picture books that I really like. The Field Trip series, the Field Trip to the Moon, Field Trip to Volcano Island, I really like. Those can be great too. We'll sometimes pull those into therapy as well. 

00:19:27 Hallie: So cool. And that's why I love using wordless picture books in general because it just elicits language and then you just get to work on literally anything. Is there anything we have not discussed here today that you feel like people should know about language sampling, someone who is hesitant? How have you felt like your confidence in it increased over time? Like, what would you say to someone who's, like, a little unsure? 

00:19:50 Jacquilyn: I would say to please try it because I know adding a whole another task during assessment can feel really overwhelming. But to try it and… or if you're already doing it, please try to use a scoring measure with it because I think it's going to help you frame your assessment writing a little bit well. SLAM is, I think, a great one because they are shorter. So I think that's a good one to start with. Because they're sequence pictures, you don't get a lot of utterances. A lot of times, you only get maybe four or five utterances. This is a great starting point of I'm just going to try. The other one thing I want to highlight too is a lot of – now we have so many great note taking things or transcribing thing… apps on our phone or our computers. It's made transcribing so much simpler because you record and it'll already make a transcript for you. It's not as arduous as people typically think. So just try one. 

00:20:43 Hallie: And I know a bunch of SLPs are dabbling with AI to help them with the transcribing, like saying, you know, pull this, give me how many this. And so if you are techie and want to explore and go wild and crazy, it's a way that can really save you tons of time, but also help you make confident decisions, which is what it's all about.

00:21:05 Jacquilyn: Yes. 

00:21:05 Hallie: Thank you so, so much. Where can everyone learn more about you and everything you have to offer? 

00:21:10 Jacquilyn: Yeah. So I think Instagram is probably where we’re the most active, which is Habla Cadabra SLP. So H-A-B-L-A and then cadabra like the magic words and then SLP. So that's the same for our Instagram as well as our website. We've recently started a blog on our website, so we have a post out about how to calculate PGU as well as some free narrative resources. On our website, we'll also try to publish resources. It's more geared towards people that are working with bilingual populations, but we also have information of just great things to know.

00:21:43 Hallie: Thank you so much. We'll have links to everything in the show notes, so not to worry. Go to that Jacquilyn out on Instagram. Tell her to say hi. Tell her – ask her any questions that you might have, or even just say thank you for sharing her wisdom and experience and expertise with all of us here today. So I always end my episodes with a joke because jokes build rapport and they are fun. So what happens when ice cream gets angry? 

00:22:08 Jacquilyn: Oh, I don't know. 

00:22:12 Hallie: It has a meltdown. My corny dad jokes are here, guys, every week so that you can steal them and use them with your students, and you can blame me if they find it corny. Okay, guys? Alright? So until next week, everyone. Stay out of trouble. 

00:22:36 Hallie: Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of SLP Coffee Talk. It means the world to me that you're tuning in each and every week and getting the jolt of inspiration you need. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at my website, speechtimefun.com. Don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. See you next week with another episode full of fun and inspiration from one SLP to another. Have fun, guys. 

00:23:17 Hallie: Hey there, SLP. I have a quick question for you. What if you could have just one book on your shelf that actually gets the challenges of working with middle school and high school students? Well, it's here. Well, actually, the pre order is here, but, hey, I'm so excited to let you know that my brand new book, The Secondary SLP Guide, is available for preorder. And when you preorder, you get an exclusive bonus that you won't want to miss. 

00:23:48 Hallie: It is packed with real talk strategies, quick tips, and inspiration that you can use with your middle school and high school students or all year long. This is the perfect book for a book club, a grad student group, or just flipping through when you're stuck and in a IEP writing spiral. So head to speechtimefun.com/preorder or head to my Instagram and send me a DM with the word preorder, and I will send you the link so you can preorder now. And I cannot wait for you to get your hands on this book in November, but the sooner you grab it, the better the bonus.

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