ABSTRACT
CHAT provides both basic and advanced formats for transcription and coding. The basic level of CHAT is called minCHAT. New users should start by learning minCHAT, which is discussed in the section on minCHAT. MinCHAT looks much like other intuitive transcription systems that are in general use in the fields of child language and discourse analysis. It makes sense for the new user to focus on the use of minCHAT and to postpone reading the rest of this manual at first. However, eventually users will find that there is something they want to be able to code that goes beyond minCHAT. At that point, they should move on to learning midCHAT, as described on page 18.
