What is the recommended range of utterances in a language sample?

• A. 10-20 utterances
• B. 50-100 utterances
• C. 200-300 utterances
• D. 5-15 utterances

Answer: (B)

Collecting a language sample long enough to reflect typical use is essential for reliable analysis of a child’s speech. If the sample is too short, you may miss the range of grammatical structures, morphemes, and discourse skills the child uses, which can make language seem less complex or varied than it actually is. A length of roughly fifty to one hundred utterances provides enough data to capture a representative mix of topics, sentence types, and inflectional forms, giving more stable estimates of measures like mean length of utterance and lexical diversity. This range also remains practical in clinical settings, balancing thoroughness with the time and effort needed to collect and transcribe. Going beyond this range tends to offer diminishing returns for standard analyses, while shorter samples risk unreliable conclusions.