Abstract
Speech language pathologists and special educators in public schools are expected to progress monitor their students’ performance. With large case loads, progress monitoring can be challenging. For students with articulation or phonological disorders, progress monitoring is relatively easy. One documents the phonemes as correct or incorrect in words, sentences, or a conversational language sample. Progress monitoring for language skills is more complex, particularly discourse language skills. In the 24:4 issue of Word of Mouth, I reviewed the Narrative Language Measures (NLM; Petersen & Spencer, 2010). The NLM is intended as a progress monitoring tool for macrostructure and microstructure narrative skills. Macrostructure elements include setting, problem, emotion, plan, attempt, consequence. The microstructure score is based on use of some specific connector words such as then, because, when, after. The NML has two components: a retell of a real-life story and a generation of a personal story. In the retell task, the examiner reads a short real-life story. The child is asked to retell the story and receives points for each story element and connective words that are included. In the story generation task, the examiner models a personal story and then asks if something like that has ever happened to the child. The child’s personal stories are scored for macrostructure story elements included on a 0–3 point scale; on the microstructure score they receive points for unique adverbs and adjectives and for temporal and causal connectives.
The Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language (MISL) developed by Ron and Sandy Gillam is somewhat similar to the Narrative Language Measures tool, but is designed to be used to progress monitor students’ skills for generating fictional narratives from single pictures rather retelling real-life stories or generating personal narratives. The MISL can be downloaded from: http://comd.usu.edu/files/uploads/MISL.pdf. It has two scales: one that measures the complexity of macrostructure elements and one that measures microstructure elements. The macrostructure score range is 0–21 and microstructure range is 0–15, yielding a total score that is a combination of the subscale scores (range = 0–36).
The microstructure subscale of the MISL consists of five features considered characteristic of literate style language, including
Coordinating conjunctions coordinate nouns, verbs, or clauses FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so; “I would go with you, but I don’t like football.”)
Subordinating conjunctions join a subordinate clause to a main clause (e.g., when, while, because, before, after, until, if, where, that, who; “We’ll go swimming when the weather is warmer.” He is the boy who won the marathon)
Adverbs that modify verbs or adjectives
Mental verbs and linguistic verbs. Mental verbs may include think, know, believe, imagine, feel, consider, suppose, decide, forget, and remember. Linguistic verbs may include read, write, say, tell, speak, shout, answer, call, reply, whisper, and yell.
Elaborated noun phrases involve modifiers + nouns (modifiers may include articles [e.g., a, an, the], possessives [e.g., my, his, their], demonstratives [e.g., this, that, those], quantifiers [e.g., every, each, some], wh-words [e.g., what, which, whichever], and true adjectives [e.g., tall, long, ugly]).
In each microstructure category, students receive a score of 0 if they provide no exemplars, 1 point for 1 exemplar, 2 points for 2 exemplars, and 3 points for 2 or more exemplars.
The macrostructure subscale of the MISL consists of 7 features of narratives, including:
Character: the agent who performs actions
Setting: time, place
Initiating event: event that motivates characters into action
Internal response: feelings characters have about the initiating event
Plan: thoughts of characters related to the initiating event with the intent to act
Attempt: action taken by characters in response to the initiating event including complicating actions
Consequence: end result of characters actions in relation to the initiating event
The macrostructure features are also scored on a 0–3 point scale. Students receive a 0 if a feature is not mentioned. They also receive a 0 if they use an ambiguous pronoun for a character, e.g., saying “he” when there are several males in the picture stimuli. Students receive 1 point when they use an emotion word (internal response) or mental state word (plan), refer to an event, an action (attempt), an action linked to another action (outcome) BUT these words or statements do not constitute an initiating event for a story or are not linked to the initiating event. To receive 2 points for a feature, characters must be given a specific name, and each of the other features must have a word or statement that is explicitly linked to the initiating event. Students receive 3 points if they gave a specific name to more than 1 character or give more than one exemplar for each feature. To receive 3 points for the attempt feature, they must produce a complicating action
Initiating events, actions, and consequences are linked together in the scoring system because they must be interrelated to form a coherent episode. For example, for initiating events, a score of 0 is awarded when there is nothing stated in the story to motivate a character into action. A score of 2 is awarded if the initiating event clearly motivated a character’s actions. For example, if the child said, “The spaceship landed. And the children ran over to see it,” the initiating event would be coded as 2 because the stated action of running to see the spaceship was tied directly to the spaceship having landed. Compare this to the utterances “The spaceship landed. And the children ate their lunch.” In this example, there was an event (spaceship landing) that may have led to an action; however, there is no clear relationship between the proposed initiating event (spaceship landing) and the stated action (ate lunch). In this example, the statement “The spaceship landed” would receive a score of 1. This manner of scoring provides a way for documenting both quantitative and qualitative changes in narrative macrostructure.
Gillam and Gillam recommend using single-scene stimulus pictures that preferably do not contain an obvious initiating event. They report using pictures in which children were holding hands in a circle, children were running around in the rain, or a monkey was riding on the back of a dog. Such pictures would require that students have some sense of story or awareness that stories typically should begin with some type of initiating event or problem. I have preferred using pictures that suggest one of two themes that are universal in narratives: villainy or lack or loss, because I find that children are more likely to give me a story-like response. By age 5, children in most cultures have some understanding of these themes in stories. Pictures I use often show a setting and pose a possible problem, e.g., a gorilla on a mountain with people coming up the mountain, a coyote staring at a sheep, children flying on a large bird over a strange land. The pictures I typically use make it easier for a child to produce statements that could be coded as setting and initiating event. For consistency of scoring, one should not mix the two types of pictures in an assessment or in pre- and posttesting. The pictures the Gillams suggest are more challenging than the ones I have used. If one is using the MISL for progress monitoring, be certain to use pictures that have similar structure for each assessment.