• updated subtests
• color illustrations and stimulus items
• a shorter testing time

The five subtests represent the core skills of expressive language and are strong indicators of academic success and reading readiness.  The tasks require students to process language, organize language, retrieve what they hear, and use the expressive skills needed for success in the classroom.  The assessment is sensitive to typical variations in expressive language development which means you'll identify those children with true expressive language disorders and have less chance of over-identification of such disorders.  The revised edition is a quicker, more direct assessment than the original Expressive Language Test. 

Rationale 
 

The Expressive Language Test 2 is a measure of certain expressive language skills and not a measure of "mixed receptive-expressive language disorder" (DSM IV, 2000).  "This (expressive) disorder interferes with educational or occupational achievement or with social communication" (Bishop & Leonard, 2001).  The language skills assessed in this test are ones that teachers, researchers, and clinicians commonly identify as most predictive of classroom learning difficulty:

Sequencing:  Eisenberg et al. (2008) state that narrative ability is an important predictor of academic success and can be used to distinguish children with language impairment from their typically-developing peers.  Mishler (1995) maintains that narratives (or sequencing) appear in three types and necessitate that the speaker's expressive language skills, along with good verbal processing and auditory memory, be intact.  Johnston (1994) also showed that children with SLI perform poorly on tasks requiring processing of visual or auditory signals.

Metalinguistics—Defining:  Metalinguistics (the ability to talk about our language) requires the child to be aware of and facile with the use of words, their definitions, and how to use those words in context.  The chief difficulty in talking about definitions is that the speaker needs to use other words or terms to define a word.  These other words and terms may not exist in the vocabulary of the child with expressive language skills (Ierodiakonou, 1993).

Metalinguistics—Generating Examples:  Generating examples of words, such as verb, rhyme, or sentence, requires recursive definition or the ability to zero in on exactly the set of features that belong to a given word and rule out all other features.  Therefore, the definition of rhyme must be words that sound alike, not words that look alike or words that are spelled alike (Aczel, 1977).

Grammar and Syntax:  Grammatical deficits limit a child's ability to express meaning.  Syntax is an important focus for language assessment and intervention for school-age children with language impairment (Eisenberg et al., 2008).  ". . . developmental patterns of children with SLI have been shown to differ consistently from those of younger, typically-developing children who are matched on some linguistic criterion" (Leonard, 1994, 1998; Rice & Wexler, 1996; Rice, Wexler, & Hershberger, 1998).  Because grammatical morphology is an area that consistently defines children with expressive language disorders, it certainly has a place in any expressive assessment.

Defining Categories:  The ability to give verbal definitions is well-recognized as a strong correlate of children's academic success and literacy attainment (Chall, 1987; Johnson & Anglin, 1995).  The natural language process, latent semantic analysis, presented by Landaur and Dumais (1997) describes the relationship between a set of words and the terms they contain by producing a set of related concepts.  For instance, the term communication contains the terms of verbal and nonverbal expression, information exchange, listening, etc.  Therefore, the category of communication is defined by those concepts.

Subtests
Depending on the subtest, stimuli are presented to the student verbally, visually, and/or in written form.

Subtest A, Sequencing
Assess sequencing skills three different ways:

1. Describe a sequence of events or answer sequence questions about a picture.  Show the child the picture and say, "This is Sarah. Tell me how she'll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Tell me step by step."

2. Tell about an event without using pictures.  "Now we won't use pictures. Tell me step by step how you wrap a present."

3. Sequence a set of pictures and tell a story about them.  "I will show you some pictures.  Put them in order and tell me a story about them."

Subtest B, Metalinguistics—Defining
Define a metalinguistics concept.  Tell me what a long word is.

Subtest C, Metalinguistics—Generating Examples
Give an example of the target metalinguistics concept.  Tell me a long word.  

Subtest D, Grammar and Syntax
Repair either a grammatical or a syntactical error in a sentence or rearrange randomly-presented words into a sentence.  I goed to the store.  How much people can fit in this elevator?  

Subtest E, Defining Categories
Define or describe a category when presented with a category name.  Tell me what a plant is.

Standardization and Statistics

• Test Scores
  • Normed on 1,700+ subjects
  • Age Equivalents
  • Percentile Ranks
  • Standard Scores
• Demographics
  Demographics reflect the national school population demographics from the latest National Census.  Test performances reflect typically-achieving students as well as those in subgroups found in the school population. 
  Subjects included in the study:
  • regular education
  • special education
  • regular education with IEPs for special services
  • all socioeconomic levels
  • White, Black, Hispanic or Latino, Asian, and other groups from 44 states
  Subjects excluded from the study:
  • unable to use English proficiently at school
  • nonverbal
  • degree of hearing loss
  • reside or attend school outside of the United States
• Reliability Studies
  • SEM
  • Inter-Rater Reliability
  • Test-Retest
  • Reliability Based on Item Homogeneity (KR20)
• Validity Studies
  • Contrast Groups (t-values):  Test discriminates between subjects with normal social language development and subjects with autism and/or language impairment.  
  • Point Biserial Correlations
  • Subtest Intercorrelations
  • Correlations Between Subtests and Total Test
• Race/Socioeconomic Status
  • Statistical analysis conducted at both the item and subtest levels
  • Z-tests show race is not a strong factor on the Expressive Language Test at the item level.
  • Chi Square analysis at the subtest level
  • Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

Examiner Qualifications
The test should be administered only by a trained professional familiar with language disorders (e.g., speech-language pathologist, psychologist).  Paraprofessionals or support personnel cannot adequately administer and score the test.

Test Procedure

• Testing Time:  35 minutes
• The test has no basals or ceilings.  All subtests are administered to each student in their entirety.

Test Scoring

• A score of 1 or 0 is assigned to each response, nased on relevancy and quality.
• A score of 0 generally reflects a response that is incorrect or irrelevant.
• Examples of correct and incorrect responses are given in the Scoring Standards chapter of the Examiner's Manual.

Extra Helps
The Discussion of Performance in the Examiner's Manual includes:

• general remediation strategies
• the academic implications of poor performance on each subtest
• glossary of testing terms
• bibliography

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