Assesses language skills and acquired vocabulary.

The Test of Adolescent Language is an individually administered test of language skills and acquired vocabulary for students in grades 6-12. It can aid in identifying specific areas where students need help and in diagnosing learning disabilities. There are eight subtests with questions requiring both oral and written responses and involving a variety of activities, such as matching words and pictures, identifying similar sentence structures, and using words in sentences. The test yields composite scores in the following 10 areas: listening, speaking, reading, writing, spoken language, written language, vocabulary, grammar, receptive language, and expressive language. Results are converted from raw scores to percentile rankings and expressed as an Adolescent Language Quotient (ALQ). The test is untimed and usually takes about 1-½ hours.

For Further Study

Books

McCullough, Virginia. Testing and Your Child: What You Should Know About 150 of the Most Common Medical, Educational, and Psychological Tests. New York: Plume, 1992.

Shore, Milton F., Patrick J. Brice, and Barbara G. Love. When Your Child Needs Testing: What Parents, Teachers, and Other Helpers Need to Know about Psychological Testing. New York: Crossroad, 1992.

Walsh, W. Bruce, and Nancy E. Betz. Tests and Assessment. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.

Wodrich, David L., and Sally A. Kush. Children's Psychological Testing: A Guide for Nonpsychologists. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Co., 1990.