ASHA Learning Pass

Narrative discourse is an important goal for many students across the age span but can be difficult to characterize and track over time due to the multitude of progress monitoring tools to choose from. This session highlights that one narrative assessment approach does not fit all students and that clinicians need to be able to select a rubric that is sensitive to changes in language ability as it becomes more complex over time. The presenter explores currently available rubrics and scoring systems for measuring oral narrative proficiency that utilize different elicitation procedures and scoring criteria and describes a continuum of narrative ability that can serve as a guideline for choosing rubrics that best serve progress monitoring needs for individual students.

This course is a recorded session from the 2022/2023 online conference “Assessment, Eligibility, and Dismissal in Schools: Strategies, Tools, and Decision-Making.”

Learning Outcomes
You will be able to:

• describe three or more progress monitoring tools for measuring oral narrative abilities of 4- to 15-year-old students with language disorders
• identify 3-5 procedures for eliciting oral narrative samples from 4- to 15-year-old students with language disorders
• explain critical differences between oral narrative scoring criteria that may influence clinical judgments of oral narrative proficiency
• discuss a “best practice” continuum for measuring oral narrative proficiency as students demonstrate more sophisticated language abilities over time
• list aspects of narrative acquisition that may (and may not) differ across diverse learners

Sandra Laing Gillam, PhD, CCC-SLP, is a Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education at Utah State University. She is an ASHA Fellow and past ASHA VP for Speech-Language Pathology Practice. Her research is focused on assessment and intervention for school-age children with or at risk for developmental language disorders (DLD). Her research has largely been funded through grants from the Institute of Education Sciences.

Financial Disclosures:

• Presentation mentions the TNL-2, which was developed by her husband, Ron Gillam, and for which he receives royalties
• Designed the MISL, a freely available progress monitoring tool for measuring narrative ability

Nonfinancial Disclosures:

• None

Assessment Type

Self-assessment—Think about what you learned and report on the Completion Form how you will use your new knowledge.

To earn continuing education credit, you must complete the learning assessment by April 11, 2028.

Program History and CE Information

Online conference dates: October 12–24, 2022, February 1-13, 2023
End date: April 11, 2028