The Pragmatic Language Skills Inventory (PLSI) is an easy-to-use, norm-referenced rating scale designed to assess children's pragmatic language abilities. Its 45 items can be administered in only 5-10 minutes. The PLSI has three subscales:
- Personal Interaction Skills, assesses initiating conversation, asking for help, participating in verbal games, and using appropriate nonverbal communicative gestures.
- Social Interaction Skills, assesses knowing when to talk and when to listen, understanding classroom rules, taking turns in conversations, and predicting consequences for one's behavior.
- Classroom Interaction Skills, assesses using figurative language, maintaining a topic during conversation, explaining how things work, writing a good story, and using slang appropriately.
Cut-off scores are provided for determining whether the student exhibits characteristics of a pragmatic language disorder and should be referred for a more comprehensive language assessment. Guidelines are provided to assist the examiner in interpreting the results. Reliability and validity ratings are exceptionally strong and support the use of the PLSI as a diagnostic instrument. Teachers, early interventionists, and other professionals will find this test useful and thorough. Identify students who have a disorder, document progress in ability, collect data for research, and target pragmatic language goals all with this succinct test, user-friendly test.
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