The Test of Language Development-Primary: Fourth Edition (TOLD-P:4) assesses spoken language in young children. It is well constructed, reliable, practical, research-based, and theoretically sound. Professionals can use the TOLD-P:4 to (1) identify children who are significantly below their peers in oral language proficiency, (2) determine their specific strengths and weaknesses in oral language skills, (3) document their progress in remedial programs, and (4) measure oral language in research studies.
Subtests and Composites
The TOLD-P:4 has nine subtests which measure various aspects of oral language are described below. The results of these subtests can be combined to form composite scores for the major dimensions of language: semantics and grammar; listening, organizing, and speaking; and overall language ability (see Table 1.1).
- Picture Vocabulary — measures a child’s understanding of the meaning of spoken English words (semantics, listening)
- Relational Vocabulary — measures a child’s understanding and ability to orally express the relationships between two spoken stimulus words (semantics, organizing)
- Oral Vocabulary — measures a child’s ability to give oral definitions to common English words that are spoken by the examiner (semantics, speaking)
- Syntactic Understanding — measures a child’s ability to comprehend the meaning of sentences (grammar, listening)
- Sentence Imitation — measures a child’s ability to imitate English sentences (grammar, organizing)
- Morphological Completion — measures a child’s ability to recognize, understand, and use common English morphological forms (grammar, speaking)
- Word Discrimination — measures a child’s ability to recognize the differences in significant speech sounds (phonology, listening)
- Word Analysis — measures a child’s ability to segment words into smaller phonemic units (phonology, organizing)
- Word Articulation — measures a child’s ability to utter important English speech sounds (phonology, speaking)
Features of the TOLD:P-4
- All new normative data were collected from a demographic representative sample of the 2005 U.S. population.
- Floor and ceiling effects have been eliminated in the Core subtests and composites.
- Study of item bias has been expanded.
- Numerous validity studies, including studies of the test’s “sensitivity” and “specificity” have been provided.
- Complete directions for administering subtests have been included in the Examiner’s Manual.
- Test manual has been streamlined to be more user-friendly.
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