Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) is a foundational measure in language sample analysis, o…

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) is a foundational measure in language sample analysis, offering insight into a child's expressive language development. It's essentially the average number of morphemes a child uses per utterance. Tracking MLU over time can be a fantastic way to see progress.

One common pitfall when calculating MLU by hand is inconsistent morpheme counting. It's easy to accidentally miscount irregular plurals or verb conjugations, leading to an inaccurate representation of a child's language abilities. For example, "feet" is one morpheme, not two, even though it represents the plural of "foot".

If you're looking for a reliable way to get an MLU, SLP Draft offers a free, deterministic MLU calculator online. It even shows you the morpheme count for each utterance so you can review it.

You can find it at slpdraft.com/free/mlu-calculator