The test has been designed to fulfill the need for a standarised test that in a short & simple form would stimulate children to give samples of spoken language that could be evaluated in terms of information given & the grammatical structures used viz Words used to convey information ie nouns verbs prepositions; present past & future tenses; irregular forms of plural & past tenses; simple & complex sentence construction; & passive voice Catherine Renfrew's three tests have been used for many years & provide a means of assessing children's speech & language All tests are suitable for use with 3-8 year olds are norm referred to enable therapists to produce comparative results Norms are given at six-monthly intervals for both the Action Picture Test & Word finding Vocabulary & monthly for the Bus Story Test