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Rationale: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are clinically under-identified. Universal screening tools with failure rates that oversample are needed to identify children at-risk for SLI. The purpose of this study was to evaluate, over two years, the school district-wide failure rate of kindergarteners administered the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI; Rice & Wexler, 2001). Methods: Kindergarteners (N = 284) were administered the third person singular (3S) and past tense (PT) probes of the TEGI; scores on the 3S and PT Probes were averaged to generate the TEGI Screener score. Each child’s pass/fail status on the 3S Probe, the PT Probe, and the TEGI Screener score was made with TEGI manual age-related criterion scores. Results: The screening tool yield most closely and consistently aligned with the recommended failure rate of ~30% (Oetting et al., 2016b; based on Tomblin et al., 1997) was the TEGI PT Probe. TEGI Screener and 3S Probe failure rates fell below the recommended level. Conclusion: The TEGI, particularly the PT Probe, may be used as a universal screener to manageably oversample children at-risk for SLI. (Funding: US Department of Education H325D140087; H325D080075; ASHFoundation) |
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