What is the TOAL-4? The Test of Adolescent and Adult Language explained

The TOAL-4, or Test of Adolescent and Adult Language, Fourth Edition, is a standardized measure of spoken and written English language ability for people aged 12 years 0 months through 24 years 11 months, published by PRO-ED. It is given by a qualified examiner, usually a speech-language pathologist, educational diagnostician, or school psychologist, and it takes about 60 minutes. The TOAL-4 is a language test and not an IQ test. It reports how well a person understands and produces words and sentences compared with same-age peers; it does not estimate general reasoning ability. This article explains what the test measures, how it is structured and scored, and how a language score relates to an IQ score.

According to PRO-ED's product description, the TOAL-4 was "designed to measure spoken and written language abilities of adolescents and young adults, with varying degrees of knowledge of the English language." The test samples vocabulary knowledge, the ability to derive and relate words, and the ability to build and correct grammatical sentences. It does not sample nonverbal problem solving or memory span, which are core parts of a full cognitive battery.

The Buros Center for Testing, which publishes the Mental Measurements Yearbook, lists three stated purposes for the test: to identify adolescents and adults who score significantly below their peers and may need help improving language proficiency, to determine relative strengths and weaknesses among language abilities, and to serve as a research tool in studies of language problems in adolescents and adults. The TOAL-4 was reviewed in the Eighteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook.

The age range starts at 12, which is where PRO-ED's younger language batteries leave off. The publisher's TOLD-I:5, for example, covers ages 8 through 17 and assesses spoken language only. The TOAL-4 extends coverage into early adulthood and adds a written component.

PRO-ED reports that the fourth edition has six subtests, reduced from eight in the previous edition. Three are spoken and three are written. The publisher's own examples make the format clear.

• Word Opposites: The examiner says a word and the examinee gives a spoken word with the opposite meaning. The opposite of "day" is "night."

• Word Derivations: The examiner reads a key word and two sentences; the examinee supplies the missing word at the end of the second sentence, derived from the key word. Given "laugh," the sentence "The people broke out ..." is completed with "laughing."

• Spoken Analogies: The examiner reads a partial analogy and the examinee finishes it with one word. "Birds are to sing as dogs are to ..." is completed with "bark."

• Word Similarities: The examinee sees a printed word and writes a synonym. PRO-ED notes that correct spelling is irrelevant here; "pig" written after seeing "hog" earns credit.

• Sentence Combining: The examinee reads two or more short sentences and writes one grammatically correct sentence that keeps their meaning. "We ate lunch" and "It was an hour ago" become "We ate lunch an hour ago."

• Orthographic Usage: The examinee rewrites sentences, supplying the correct words and punctuation marks. This is the subtest that most directly checks the mechanics of written English.

The subtests combine into three composites. The publisher describes the "Spoken Language" composite as the sum of the scaled scores from Word Opposites, Word Derivations, and Spoken Analogies. The "Written Language" composite combines Word Similarities, Sentence Combining, and Orthographic Usage. The "General Language" composite draws on all six subtests and is the broadest summary the test produces.

PRO-ED lists the TOAL-4 as suitable for either individual or group administration, with a testing time of about 60 minutes. Group administration reflects the written format of half the subtests. The complete kit contains the Examiner's Manual, 25 Examiner Record Booklets, and 25 Written Language Forms.

Results are reported as "scaled scores" for each subtest and as composite scores, along with "percentile ranks." A percentile rank tells you the percentage of people in the norm sample who scored at or below a given score; a percentile rank of 50 is exactly average for that age. The publisher describes the composites as a way "to estimate an individual's status relative to the abilities measured by the test," which is careful wording. The score describes performance on these tasks at this point in time, and a professional interprets it alongside other information.

The TOAL-4 carries PRO-ED's Level B purchasing qualification. Under the publisher's policy, that level covers people with a master's degree in psychology, education, speech-language pathology, or a closely related field plus formal training in the ethical administration and interpretation of clinical assessments, or certification by a relevant professional body such as ASHA. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's practice guidance states that speech-language pathologists play a central role in the screening, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of spoken language disorders, and that clinicians use valid and reliable standardized assessments with normative data alongside other data sources rather than on their own. In practice, a TOAL-4 score is one piece of a broader evaluation.

The publisher reports that the TOAL-4 was normed on 1,671 individuals in 35 states, all between the ages of 12-0 and 24-11, with the data collected between fall 2004 and fall 2005. The sample's demographics were keyed to census projections for 2004 and stratified by age for geographic region, gender, ethnicity, Hispanic status, family income, and parental education.

PRO-ED also lists several changes in the fourth edition. The theoretical model was revised to reflect how adolescents and adults actually use language. Reliability coefficients were computed by age and for subgroups within the normative sample, including males and females, several ethnic groups, individuals identified as gifted, and individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or learning disabilities. New validity studies were conducted, bias studies by gender and ethnicity were reported, and the publisher states that care was taken to avoid floor and ceiling effects. The specific reliability and validity values live in the Examiner's Manual, and an evaluator should consult them for the age band in question.

One honest limitation follows from the dates. The norms are now roughly two decades old, and the kit itself is copyrighted 2007. Language use and demographics shift over time, so an examiner should keep the age of the reference group in mind when interpreting a score near a decision threshold.

An IQ test is built to estimate general cognitive ability, usually by sampling several distinct domains such as verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, spatial ability, working memory, and processing speed, and then combining them into a full-scale score. The TOAL-4 samples one domain, language, in depth. Its General Language composite is not a proxy for full-scale IQ, even though vocabulary and verbal tasks do correlate with overall ability.

That correlation is real and worth understanding. Research on the "general factor" of intelligence, including a 2019 analysis by Dr. Russell T. Warne and Cassidy Burningham of 97 datasets from 31 non-Western nations, finds that a single factor typically accounts for a large share of the variance across a set of diverse cognitive tasks. Verbal tasks tend to load on that factor. So a person with strong language scores will, on average, do well on a broad ability test. The key words are "on average." A language test cannot tell you how a specific person reasons with novel nonverbal material, and a gap between language and nonverbal performance is exactly what a comprehensive evaluation is meant to detect.

The relationship also runs the other way. Clinical practice no longer requires a gap between language scores and nonverbal IQ to identify a language disorder. The CATALISE consensus statement led by Dorothy Bishop and colleagues in 2017 states that a child with a language disorder may have a low level of nonverbal ability and that this does not preclude a diagnosis of developmental language disorder. ASHA similarly advises against "cognitive referencing," the practice of using IQ scores to decide who qualifies for language services. A language test and an IQ test therefore answer different questions, and neither result should be used to override the other.

Compared with other adolescent language batteries, the TOAL-4's distinctive features are its written subtests and its extension to age 24. The CELF-5 is the other widely used option for this age group and takes a more clinical, individually administered approach to spoken language. Which test an evaluator chooses depends on the referral question.

No. The TOAL-4 measures spoken and written language ability compared with same-age peers. It does not measure nonverbal reasoning, working memory, or processing speed and does not produce an IQ score.

PRO-ED sells the test at qualification Level B, which generally means a master's-level professional with training in clinical assessment, such as a speech-language pathologist, educational diagnostician, or school psychologist.

The publisher lists testing time as about 60 minutes. It can be given individually or to a group.

Each of the six subtests yields a scaled score and a percentile rank. Scaled scores combine into Spoken Language, Written Language, and General Language composites.

Not on its own. Language ability correlates with general ability, yet a language test cannot substitute for a full cognitive battery. Diagnosis of any condition belongs to a qualified clinician.

As of September 2026, PRO-ED's catalog lists the fourth edition, copyrighted 2007, as the current version.

The TOAL-4 tells a trained examiner how an adolescent or young adult's spoken and written English compares with peers. If the question is how well someone reasons across verbal and nonverbal material, a different instrument is needed. The RIOT IQ test, the Reasoning and Intelligence Online Test, was developed by RIOT IQ with psychometrician Dr. Russell T. Warne for adults 18 and older. It includes 15 subtests across six cognitive indices (verbal reasoning, fluid reasoning, spatial ability, working memory, processing speed, and reaction time), takes about 52 minutes, and reports scores on the familiar mean-100, standard-deviation-15 scale. It does not replace an individually administered diagnostic evaluation, and it does not assess language the way the TOAL-4 does. For a normed picture of general reasoning ability, you can take the RIOT IQ test at riotiq.com.

1. PRO-ED. (2007). TOAL-4: Test of Adolescent and Adult Language, Fourth Edition, Complete Kit [Product page]. proedinc.com

2. PRO-ED. (n.d.). Qualifications policy. proedinc.com

3. Buros Center for Testing. (n.d.). Test of Adolescent and Adult Language, Fourth Edition [Test review listing, Eighteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook]. marketplace.unl.edu

4. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.). Spoken language disorders [Practice Portal]. asha.org

5. Bishop, D. V. M., Snowling, M. J., Thompson, P. A., Greenhalgh, T., & CATALISE-2 Consortium. (2017). Phase 2 of CATALISE: A multinational and multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study of problems with language development: Terminology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58(10), 1068-1080. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

6. Warne, R. T., & Burningham, C. (2019). Spearman's g found in 31 non-Western nations: Strong evidence that g is a universal phenomenon. Psychological Bulletin, 145(3), 237-272. doi.org

7. PRO-ED. (n.d.). TOLD-I:5: Test of Language Development, Intermediate, Fifth Edition, Complete Kit [Product page]. proedinc.com

Hero photo: Students reading and writing at a wooden table, seen from above. Photo by Javirandor, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).