For academic success, it is increasingly important that students of all ages can produce and comprehend expository discourse. This article provides guidance to clinicians and educators on using language sample analysis (LSA) to assess the expository language abilities of students across grades. Focusing on microstructural and macrostructural…

This article encourages educators and speech-language pathologists to look beyond the language of African American English speakers for an explanation of the Black-White achievement gap in education. A brief historical overview shows that the attention to the performance of African American children in school began many years ago but gained…

This article discusses the main purposes of reading comprehension assessment and identifies the key features of good assessment. The article also identifies pitfalls that clinicians and educators should avoid to conduct valid assessments of reading comprehension, such as the degree to which the measure taps the constructive and integrative…

This article views literacy as a broad-based set of abilities reflecting intelligence across many competencies, including language, musical, logical, kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, linguistic, and spatial competencies. Described is a model of language competence which allows for assessment of those language skills bearing on academic…