I talked last week about the Test of Word Finding and Test of Word Finding in Discourse. What other standardized tests can give us clues about a child’s word retrieval, or word finding?
When I administer the CELF (Pearson), I make a note to myself in the margin of the test booklet when I hear what could be a word retrieval difficulty. That information doesn’t go into the official scoring, but when I see a lot of “WF” “WF” “WF” notes, I raise my eyebrows. “Word Classes” and “Formulated Sentences” are subtests that seem particularly sensitive to word finding issues. I was sad to see the CELF-5 eliminate the expressive portion of “Word Classes,” because I have found many children with word finding difficulties have trouble pulling up labels for categories (such as musical instruments, tools, transportation).
The Word Test (Linguisystems, now owned by Pro Ed) asks for synonyms, antonyms, definitions, and flexible word use. All that information is helpful. The “semantic absurdities” subtest, however, is the one that seems to stump some word finders. Their circumlocutions and revisions don’t affect their official scores. But the path they take to formulate their answers is sometimes revealing.
I mentioned in a previous post that some SLPs watch for a discrepancy between receptive and expressive vocabulary. I totally agree with that strategy; I just don’t think it should be the sole determiner to qualify a child for therapy. But certainly consider a receptive/expressive discrepancy as important.
I am also intrigued by Elizabeth Carrow-Woolfolk’s new Test of Expressive Language, or TEXL. I haven’t used it yet, have you? Reading about the test makes me think it would also give some clues about a child’s word finding abilities. If you have experience with this test that you can share with my readers, please post a comment. I would like your ideas!