Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

K ALJENAIE
3.2 Data Analysis
The samples were directly transcribed to avoid forgetting information and
to avoid overlapping of taping and transcribing different subjects. It is
better that the investigator is the transcriber, because she was present and
familiar with all the detail about the session and the activities. Most
importantly, the investigator knows the children well and understands them
well. Everything said by or to the child was included, as well as
commentary about the object used by the child. Besides this, linguistic as
well as contextual information was noted. The investigator ignored the
peculiar properties of child pronunciation whenever these do not bear
crucially on the issues of the research discussed. All the transcriptions
were executed on computer which helped to administer the computer
analysis program. The investigator used a computer program called SALT
(Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts) developed by Miller &
Chapman (1993), which provides frequencies and general measures like
mean length of utterance (MLU). The results of Tense and Agreement are
mainly based on total utterances, excluding imitations as well as routines
and formulae.
4. Results
Sara
The first session was productive in terms of number of utterances as well
as the type of data, as it will be presented below. In sample 4, the number
of utterances dropped to 194 for no particular reason other than that she
wanted to play more than to chat. In sample 6, the number went up to 294
when that recording took place at her home with the presence of her
mother and one of her sisters. Again the number slightly dropped in sample
7 when she went back to the nursery after the holiday. Since then the total
number of utterances increased gradually till it reached its peak at 406 in
the final sample. There is a gap of more than a month between sample 5
and 6 due to the holidays. She was recorded at home and remarkably the
change of the settings and the presence of two members of Sara’s family
did not affect her performance in a negative way.
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