Listen to the child in conversation with peers or adults during play. Record or write down the conversation for later analysis.
No elicitation needed.
During conversations the child uses: Articles (e.g., a, an, and the) Regular 3rd person verbs (e.g., eats, likes) Contractible copula (e.g., is eating, is sleeping) Uncontractible auxiliary (e.g., “I am here.”) For example during house play the child says, “I called the pizza man. He is bringing the pizza. The baby likes pizza, but she is sleeping.”
During book reading the early childhood educators and parents can encourage use of the emerging new morphemes by asking questions about what is in the storybook. “What is he doing?” “What does he like to eat?”
 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015
©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.