Language samples are critical for assessment procedures, as they allow speech pathologists to gather a variety of data in a culturally sensitive way. However, most of our information and criteria to guide language sampling procedures come from the English language. For clinicians, the Mean Length Utterance Levels are used to help diagnose language impairments in young children by comparing their scores to the levels of peers their age. However, English has a different morphological system than Spanish. For example, in English, an irregular past tense verb only counts for one morpheme, while in Spanish these verbs can count as two or three morphemes. Another difference is how English nouns do not have grammatical genders, unlike Spanish nouns. If we use English rules for calculating the MLU to decide whether Spanish speakers have a lower MLU than their peers, this measure might not accurately reflect the language development levels of bilingual or monolingual Spanish-speaking children.

This research analyzes if there are any significant differences between the English and Spanish morphological systems. Specifically, this research will analyze differences in terms of MLU, grammatical errors, and Type Token Ratio (TTR), which is a measure of the sophistication of language. The data will be taken from language samples from CHILDES. Monolingual English/Spanish, and Bilingual students, ages 7-9, have been recorded recounting the story read to them in their own words. The data will be measured using the CLAN program, as well as manual calculations.

Dr. Roepke was extremely influential in the development of Miah's independent research project. Her passion about our field and discovering new information to benefit our future clients is admirable. This passion shined through our collaboration on the research project regarding the analysis of language samples of monolingual and bilingual children. Throughout this experience, she has been a great resource for information, supplying Miah with additional research articles, answering questions, and inquiring about additional ways they could analyze the results. Her passion, enthusiasm, and support positively impacted the development of Miah's project. Miah has greatly appreciated the opportunity to have worked with her on this research.