Which activities are included in obtaining language samples?

• A. Play, picture description, storytelling, open-ended questions and/or conversation
• B. 50-100 utterances
• C. Video or audio recorded
• D. Transcribed sample segmented into utterances

Answer: (A)

Obtaining language samples relies on engaging the speaker in a variety of naturalistic tasks that prompt spontaneous speech across different contexts. The best approach includes play, picture description, storytelling, open-ended questions, and conversation because these activities encourage real-time language use in multiple forms—vocabulary, sentence structure, narration, and pragmatic skills. Play taps symbolic use and social interaction; describing pictures prompts detailed expressive language and sequencing; storytelling elicits organized narrative structure with grammar and cohesion; open-ended questions invite longer, more complex responses and flexible syntax; and conversation provides interactive turn-taking, topic maintenance, and varied discourse. Together these activities produce a representative sample of how the speaker communicates in everyday settings.

The other options describe ways of handling or measuring the sample rather than the elicitation activities themselves. A target number of utterances is a guideline for how much to collect, not what you have the person do to produce language. Video or audio recording is a method for capturing the speech, not an activity that generates it. Transcribing the sample and breaking it into utterances is part of analysis and processing after collection, not part of the elicitation process.