This popular, individually administered test measures receptive spoken grammar, vocabulary, and syntax. It tells you how well a child understands word classes and word relations, grammatical morphemes, and elaborated sentence constructions.

    The test includes 142 items presented in three sections. Within each section, items are arranged according to difficulty, and basals and ceilings are provided for scoring.

    Each stimulus item is composed of a word or sentence and a corresponding plate showing three color drawings. One of the three pictures illustrates the meaning of the word, morpheme, or syntactic structure being tested. The examiner reads the stimulus aloud, and the child points to the picture that he or she believes best represents its meaning. Oral responses are not required. Administration takes only 15 to 25 minutes, and scoring is equally quick and easy.

    Standardized on more than 1,000 children, TACL-3 provides age- and grade-based norms and percentile ranks, standard scores, and age equivalents for children aged 3-0 through 9-11. The normative sample reflects U.S. census data in regard to socioeconomic factors, ethnicity, gender, disability, and other critical variables. In addition, norms are stratified by age relative to gender, race, ethnicity, and disability.

    TACL-3 is commonly used to identify children with language problems and to clarify the nature of their problems. Test results clearly indicate areas of grammatical competence that need further assessment or remediation. The test is helpful in grouping children for intervention and instructional purposes, for monitoring progress, and for explaining language deficits to parents. Studies reported in the manual show that the test has no gender, racial, or ethnic bias.