The clinical application of SALT to evaluate intervention program effectiveness in a school context

Language sample analysis (LSA) is highly recommended in the literature as a clinical tool for diagnosis, goal-setting and measuring effectiveness. This paper describes a project undertaken by a team of speech-language pathologists in a school context, whereby language samples of a narrative retell task from 91 children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were analysed using systematic analysis of language transcription (SALT) at two testing points. This was done in an effort to streamline usual narrative analysis processes and to evaluate the effectiveness of whole school narrative programming. Children’s linguistic performance on narrative macrostructure and microstructure measures, and suggestions for future directions are discussed. Conclusions from the project suggest SALT is a valuable clinical tool for evaluating intervention program effectiveness that is transferable to the school context.