Catherine Renfrew trained as a speech therapist at the Glasgow School of Speech Therapy, qualifying in 1944. She was awarded a Fellowship of the College of Speech Therapists in 1950, resulting from her thesis on speech assessment. As a Fulbright Scholar she attended a post-graduate course at the State University of Iowa 1955-6.

After working mainly with school children in Lancashire and Nottingham she was appointed Chief Speech Therapist to the United Oxford Hospitals in 1953. During 1964-6, with leave of absence, she taught speech pathology as Visiting Lecturer at the University of Toronto. After leaving her post in Oxford in 1973, she travelled widely, lecturing in all five continents.

While working with school children, she began developing norm-referenced speech and language tests to find out whether children, experiencing difficulties in spoken language development, made more progress resulting from speech therapy than expected from maturation. The Articulation Attainment Test was first published in 1963, the Action Picture Test in 1966, the Word Finding Vocabulary Scale in 1968 and the Auditory Discrimination Test in 1973.

This edition was revised under the guidance of:

Anna Branagan

is a Speech and Language Therapist. In Gloucestershire, Anna works within a Youth Support Team supporting vulnerable young people. In Worcestershire, she works within mainstream schools supporting inclusive practice. Anna originally trained at Leeds Metropolitan University. She is the co-author of bestselling Speechmark resources Language for Thinking (second edition, 2017), Word Aware 1 (second edition, 2022) Word Aware 2 (2017), Word Aware 3 (2022) and Language for Behaviour and Emotions (2020) and was a consultant for the revised Renfrew Action Picture Test (2020)

Stephen Parsons

is a Speech and Language Therapist, trainer and author of practical language development resources for teachers and Speech and Language Therapists (SaLTs). From 1996-2017, Stephen worked as a Speech and Language Therapy Service Manager in Hackney and the City of London. With over 30 years' experience in the field, he is co-author of bestselling Speechmark resources Language for Thinking (second edition, 2017), Word Aware 1 (second edition, 2022), Word Aware 2 (2017), Word Aware 3 (2022) and Language for Behaviour and Emotions (2020) and was a consultant for the revised Renfrew Action Picture Test (2020). Stephen graduated in Speech Pathology from Flinders University before attaining an MSc in Speech and Language Therapy from City University, London, in 2000. He currently serves as Chair of NAPLIC, the UK association for professionals working with children and young people with developmental language disorder, and member of the Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder (RADLD) international committee.

The Renfrew Language Scales Books