(TEXL) Test of Expressive Language

BY ELIZABETH CARROW-WOOLFOLK AND ELIZABETH A. ALLEN

The Test of Expressive Language (TEXL) measures expressive spoken language skills and a child’s ability to produce three categories of English language forms:

• Vocabulary: Word classes such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and of words that represent basic percepts and concepts.
• Grammatical morphemes: Function words (e.g., prepositions, pronouns, determiners) and inflections (e.g., bound morphemes such as noun number and case, verb number and tense, noun–verb agreement, and derivational suffixes).
• Elaborated phrases and sentences: Syntactically based word relations and elaborated phrase and sentence constructions, including the modalities of single and combined constructions (interrogative sentences, negative sentences, active and passive voice, direct and indirect object), embedded sentences, and partially and completely conjoined sentences.

Each item is composed of a word or sentence and a corresponding picture plate. The examiner reads the stimulus aloud and the child answers a question, finishes a sentence, or combines sentences. Within each of three subtests the items are ordered according to difficulty. Age-related entry points, basals, and ceilings ensure that testing time is kept to a minimum, and children are only tested on the items that are optimal for their skill level.

The TEXL was conformed with and is a companion to the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language, Fourth Edition (TACL-4; Carrow-Woolfolk, 2014). Norms are based on a nationally representative sample of 1,205 children. The sample was stratified by age relative to region, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic factors, and other critical variables.