Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language, Second Edition
CASL-2 is a flexible comprehensive language battery that lets clinicians assemble a tailored assessment from 14 subtests across lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic domains.
At a glance
- Publisher
- WPS
- Edition year
- 2017
- Age range
- 3;0–21;11
- Domain
- Comprehensive language
- Administration time
- 45–60 minutes for the core battery
Standard scores for this battery use a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 unless noted otherwise in the publisher manual. Always cross-reference against the current edition of the manual before clinical use — publishers update norms and scoring tables on regular cycles.
What CASL-2 is
The Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language, Second Edition is the flexible alternative to CELF-5 in school-age and preschool language assessment. Rather than fixing a Core Language Score on four mandatory subtests, CASL-2 lets the clinician assemble a tailored battery from 14 subtests organised across four domains: lexical/semantic, syntactic, supralinguistic, and pragmatic language. Subtest scores convert to standard scores with a mean of 100 and an SD of 15, and the publisher provides composite scores for each domain plus a Core Composite. CASL-2 is the assessment of choice when a clinician suspects a specific weakness — for example, in figurative language or pragmatic inference — and wants to probe it without administering a full general battery.
Subtests and structure
- Receptive Vocabulary
- Antonyms
- Synonyms
- Sentence Expression
- Paragraph Comprehension of Syntax
- Grammatical Morphemes
- Sentence Comprehension
- Grammaticality Judgment
- Nonliteral Language
- Meaning from Context
- Inference
- Double Meaning
- Pragmatic Judgment
- Pragmatic Language Activities
What CASL-2 measures
CASL-2 measures four overlapping constructs through its four domain composites: lexical/semantic knowledge (receptive and expressive vocabulary, semantic relationships), syntactic knowledge (grammatical morphology, sentence comprehension and expression, grammaticality judgment), supralinguistic skill (figurative language, inference, meaning from context), and pragmatic language (pragmatic judgment of socially appropriate responses). The flexible battery design means the constructs measured in any given administration depend on which subtests the clinician selects. The Pragmatic Judgment and Nonliteral Language subtests are particularly useful in the school-age range because they probe communication skills that traditional standardised batteries leave on the table.
Strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Most flexible composite design of any current comprehensive language battery
- Strong pragmatic and supralinguistic coverage compared with CELF-5
- Subtest selection lets clinicians probe a hypothesis without a full general battery
- Pragmatic Judgment subtest is rare among standardised tests and clinically useful
Limitations
- Smaller normative sample than CELF-5 (about 2,400 examinees)
- Pragmatic Judgment subtest uses scenario vignettes that may underestimate real-world performance
- Subtest selection introduces clinician variance — two examiners can produce different composite profiles on the same child
- Less recognition by school IEP teams than CELF-5 in many districts
How language sample analysis complements CASL-2
CASL-2 has more pragmatic and supralinguistic content than CELF-5 but it still relies on structured subtest tasks. A 50-utterance conversational sample is the only way to measure pragmatic skill in actual interaction — turn-taking efficiency, topic maintenance across exchanges, repair when communication breaks down, and the use of mitigation in real requests. Pair CASL-2 Pragmatic Judgment with conversation-turn-analyzer output from a recorded sample to triangulate pragmatic skill from two angles. For grammatical morphology, the CASL-2 Grammatical Morphemes subtest probes specific obligatory contexts and the language sample captures whether the child uses those morphemes in spontaneous speech, where the rate of correct production is often more clinically meaningful than the elicited score.
“When you suspect pragmatic difficulty in a school-age child, CASL-2 gives you the only standardised number worth reporting alongside a conversational sample. Use both — the test gives you defensibility, the sample gives you the truth.”
Get the full analysis
Pair CASL-2 with automated language sample analysis
Upload the audio from your session. ConductSpeech transcribes, computes MLU, NDW, PGU, and Brown's morpheme percentages, and writes a clinician-ready summary you can drop next to the CASL-2 scores in your report.
Free tools that pair with CASL-2
MLU Calculator
Paste a language sample and get Mean Length of Utterance in morphemes and words, total utterances, total morphemes, and the matching Brown's stage. Implements Brown (1973) morpheme counting rules and runs entirely in your browser.
Open toolConversation Turn Analyzer
Free interactive conversation turn analyzer for school-based and clinic speech-language pathologists analysing child-partner dialogue transcripts. Paste a transcript with speaker tags (e.g. C: and P:) and mark each child turn as [on] or [off] for topic maintenance. The analyzer returns turns per speaker, average turn length, longest / shortest turn, total speaker-to-speaker turn switches, the child topic-maintenance ratio, a four-tier topic-maintenance classification (poor, emerging, adequate, strong), and a three-tier turn-balance classification (partner-dominant, balanced, child-dominant) in under five minutes. Tier thresholds are derived from Fey (1986), Brinton & Fujiki (1989), Mentis & Prutting (1991), and Timler (2008). Built for school SLPs, clinic SLPs, autism-assessment teams, graduate SLP students, and paediatric language researchers screening pragmatic-discourse in children with DLD, ASD, ADHD, and TBI. Mobile-friendly, client-side, no sign-up.
Open toolNarrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) Calculator
Free interactive Narrative Scoring Scheme (NSS) calculator implementing the Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, & Dunaway (2010) rubric for school-based and clinic speech-language pathologists scoring paediatric narrative language samples. Rate each of the seven NSS subscales (introduction, character development, mental states, referencing, conflict resolution, cohesion, conclusion) from 0 (immature / absent) to 5 (proficient) based on the child's story retell or personal narrative, and the calculator sums the subscale scores, classifies the total out of 35 against the published 5-11-year-old story-retell expectation band (15-28 of 35), and returns up to three intervention targets derived from the lowest-scoring subscales. Built for school SLPs, clinic SLPs, early-intervention teams, graduate SLP students, and paediatric language researchers. Mobile-friendly, client-side, no sign-up.
Open toolLanguage Sample Worksheet
Free printable and fillable language sample analysis worksheet for speech-language pathologists. Five columns (utterance #, transcription, morpheme count, grammatical Y/N, notes), configurable row count up to 100 utterances, browser print produces a clean PDF, and an inline running summary tracks total utterances, total morphemes, and rolling MLU as you fill it in.
Open toolRelated assessments
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CELF-5 is the most widely used comprehensive language battery in school-age SLP practice, covering receptive and expressive language from kindergarten through age 21.
Comprehensive language · TOLD-P:5Test of Language Development - Primary, Fifth Edition
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References
- Carrow-Woolfolk, E. (2017). Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language, Second Edition. WPS.
- Eisenberg, S. L., Fersko, T. M., & Lundgren, C. (2001). The use of MLU for identifying language impairment in preschool children: A review. AJSLP, 10(4), 323–342.
- Norbury, C. F., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2003). Narrative skills of children with communication impairments. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 38(3), 287–313.