Technique in Assessing Reading

A. Description of Course
In this module, you will learn about reading difficulties and disabilities, such as dyslexia, and
how reading is assessed. You will learn about reading skills, tests that are used to measure
reading skills, and answers to frequently asked questions about reading tests.
B. Learning Outcomes
After successfully completing this course you should be able to:
 Understand the steps of making a reading assessment
 Able to create simple assessing reading by looking at the example provided in the
example of this module.
 Develop the ability to think critically about the system of assessing reading to the
students‘ learning performance

C. Detail of Material
I. Different types Reading Skills
No test measures all reading skills. Different tests measure different skills. Reading
skills include:
A. Letters (LTRS):
Child identifies letters names and sounds, or points to letters in response to letter
names or sounds.
B. Phonological Awareness (PA):
Phonemic awareness is an umbrella term that refers to the awareness of individual
sounds in words. It includes skills at the word, syllable, and individual sound level.
This skill serves as the foundation for learning to read. In tests of phonological
 awareness the child rhymes words, segments sound in words, blends sounds, and
identifies sounds. The ability to perceive and manipulate individual sounds is most
important.
C. Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN):
Child names colors, objects, letters, or numbers in series. Letter naming is the most
important skill for reading.
D. Letter &Word Identifcation (L/W ID):
Child recognizes regular and irregular words in a list. Younger children and poor
readers recognize letters.
E. Word Attack (WA): Child recognizes
nonsense words. Nonsense words are made-up words that assess skill with phonics.
F. Reading Vocabulary (RV): Child
provides antonyms, synonyms, or complete analogies in response to written words.
G. Reading Comprehension (RC):
Child answers open-ended or multiple-choice questions, points to pictures, or flls in
missing words. Different methods for assessing comprehension may result in
different scores, depending on the child‘s profile.
H. Fluency and Automaticity (FL/AU):
Child reads passages aloud while being timed. Tests of automaticity and accuracy
require the child to read real words and/or nonsense words while being timed.
Chapter 6. Reading Assessments 5
I. Listening Comprehension (LC):
Child answers questions based on passages that are read to him. LC can provide
important information about comprehension difficulties.
The better of the students can master the all skills from above, the better of the
students‘ competence of reading will be. If the students actively engaged in reading,
they will be able to comprehend the message from the text.
It is clearly stated that based on student learning development of Leicester
University A simple way of developing the habit of taking in more than one word
per fixation is to take a page of text and divide it length ways into three with two
lines drawn down the page. Using a pen or pencil as a pointer, read each line of text
 by allowing your eye to fall only in the middle of each of the three sections, as
indicated by your pointer.
II. The Element of Reading Assessment
It is stated in Advancing Research, Improving Education on Reading
Resources Reading assessment has different types of assessment that can be used
for measuring development in reading skills in the hopes that teachers will better
understand how single skills can be assessed by multiple measures. This description
of the various assessment techniques may also help teachers to design their own
classroom assessments, and may help teachers to better understand the district or
campus assessments that are already being used with their students.
Each of the elements of the framework is briefly described, and descriptions
of various forms of assessments that could be used for that framework element are
provided.

A. Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension assessments are the most common type of
published reading test that is available. The most common reading
comprehension assessment involves asking a child to read a passage of text that
is leveled appropriately for the child, and then asking some explicit, detailed
questions about the content of the text (often these are called IRIs).
There are some variations on reading comprehension assessments, however.
For example, instead of explicit questions about facts directly presented in the
text, the child could be asked to answer inferential questions about information
which was implied by the text, or the child‘s comprehension might be tested by
his or her ability to retell the story in the child‘s own words or to summarize the
main idea or the moral of the story.
Another common reading comprehension assessment is called a "cloze" task
— words are omitted from the passage, and the child is asked to fill in the
blanks with appropriate words. Also, young children‘s reading comprehension
can be assessed by asking them to read and follow simple instructions, such as,
"Stand up" or, "Go look out the window."
B. Language Comprehension
Because comprehension is what is being measured, language
comprehension can be assessed in basically the same way reading
comprehension is assessed. With language comprehension assessment,
however, the child should not be expected to read any text. Everything from the
instructions to the comprehension questions should be presented verbally to the
child.
It is also worth noting that a child‘s listening comprehension "level" is
usually considerably higher than her reading comprehension "level." A child
that is not able to read and understand a passage of text usually has no difficulty
understanding the text if somebody else reads it to her. For most young children
learning to read, their ability to read and understand text is limited by their
decoding skills, not by their comprehension skills (That is not to say that most
children have "good" comprehension skills or that comprehension skills are not
a reading teacher‘s concern.
The point here is that even when a child‘s comprehension skills are poor,
their decoding skills are usually worse.). However, sometimes teachers find that
a child who can not read and understand a passage of text also does not
understand it when the teacher reads it to the child. It is always worthwhile to
compare a child‘s language comprehension with her reading comprehension to
be sure that her ability to understand text is not being limited by her ability to
understand language.
C. Decoding
Typically, decoding skill is measured through the child‘s ability to read
words out of context. Isolated words are presented to the child one at a time, and
the child is asked to say the word aloud (this is not a vocabulary test, so children
should not be expected to provide meanings for the word). The words selected
for a decoding test should be words that are within the child‘s spoken
vocabulary, and should contain a mix of phonetically regular and phonetically
irregular words.
D. Background Knowledge

There are many assessments on the market that measure a child‘s general
knowledge of facts about the world. Usually some estimation is made of what one
could reasonably expect children in the first grade to know (e.g. birds build nests in
trees, or bicycles have two wheels), and the child is asked to answer these simple
"fact" questions (similar to what would be found on the old intelligence tests).
However, the assessment we are suggesting is a measure of the child‘s
relevant background knowledge, and by "relevant" we mean "related to the task at
hand." For example, if a child is expected to listen to and understand the story
Charlotte’s Web, the child should have some background knowledge about farm
animals and spiders.

E. Linguistic Knowledge
Linguistic Knowledge is the synthesis of three more basic cognitive
elements -- phonology, semantics, and syntax. Linguistic knowledge is more
than the sum of its parts, but it does not lend itself to explicit assessment. A
child may have a grasp on the more basic cognitive elements, but still have
trouble blending these elements together into a stable linguistic structure. If a
child appears to have a grasp of the more basic cognitive elements, but is still
having difficulty expressing themselves or understanding others, it is likely that
the child has not yet managed to synthesize those elements.
F. Phonology
The most common assessment for phonology involves discriminating
between two words that sound similar. In this assessment, the child is asked to
listen to the teacher say pairs of words and decide if they are the same word
repeated twice (which sometimes, they should be), or if they are different
words. When pairs of different words are presented, they should only differ by
one phoneme (and they should be similar phonemes, such as /sh/ and /s/ or /d/
and /g/). Also, when pairs of different words are presented, the location of the
difference within the words should be varied (Sometimes the difference should
be at the beginning, as in RHYME-LIME sometimes in the middle, as in MUD-
 MADE and sometimes at the end of the word, as in RIP-RIB). Also,
attention should be paid to both vowels and consonants.

G. Semantics
Semantics is a general term that just refers to "meaning."
Vocabulary specifically refers to the meaning of isolated words, and
morphology specifically refers to the meaning of word parts, but
semantics can generally be applied to the meaning of word parts,
whole words, sentences and discourse.
There are several ways to assess semantics at each of these levels,
but one common thread involves the question of whether the items on
the test are presented in written form. If the child is expected to read
the items, the test becomes more of a decoding test than a test of
semantics.
H. Syntax
syntax test involves presenting the child with sentences which
have one word omitted, and asking the child to suggest words that
could fill the blanks. In this case, the meaning the word is not what is
being evaluated, but instead, the child is graded based upon the
syntactic appropriateness of the word. So, for example, the child may
fill in the sentence, "Mary fell off of the " with any of several
obviously appropriate words such as "chair" "house" or "wagon," but
credit should be given for any noun that the child supplies (e.g. "leaf"
"brain" or "mop") because they are all syntactically correct.
I. Cipher Knowledge
The best test of the child‘s ability to sound out regular words is to
ask them to name isolated (out of context) words that they are not
familiar with. This insures that they are decoding them, and not just
recognizing them or guessing based on contextual cues. Some tests
simply use real, regular words that are so rare that it is unlikely that
the words are familiar to the child (e.g. PUN, MOCK, LOOT), but
 some tests use invented or made-up words (called pseudowords) to
insure that the child does not have any prior experience with the test
items (e.g. PARD, ORT, SERT). Some tests attempt to make the task
more authentic by asking the child to read aloud a list of people‘s
names (to pretend they are "calling roll"). The names are spelled
phonetically and are not difficult to pronounce

(e.g. WANDA BOLTON, WILLIAM BECKER,

VICTOR CONRAD).
J. Lexical Knowledge
First a child learns to sound out words; then the child learns that
when certain words are sounded out, they do not make sense. As we
grow, and as we are exposed to more and more text, we learn new
irregular words. As a child, you learned words like ONE, SHOE, and
PEOPLE. As you read more, you learned words like CHOIR,
COLONEL and ISLAND.
Later still, you learned words like GEYSER, FEIGN, and
BUREAU, and if you don‘t already know them, in the future, you
may learn such words as SYNECDOCHE, BAREGE, and CACHET.
In short, a person‘s ability to correctly read irregular words is directly
related to their exposure to those words combined with information
about the correct pronunciation (It is not uncommon for people to
have read a word dozens of times, to know the meaning of that word,
but to not know it‘s correct pronunciation.)
K. Phonemes Awareness
Phonological awareness is a general term, and phoneme awareness
is a specific term which is covered by the phonological awareness
umbrella. As such, there are many tests that can be described as
phonological awareness tests, but only a few of those tests are
specific enough to also be called phoneme awareness tests.
Specifically, phonological awareness tests are tests which reflect
the child's knowledge that words are made up of sounds (linguists
 call this a "metalinguistic" skill), while phoneme awareness tests are
tests which reflect the child's specific knowledge that words are made
up of phonemes.

III. References
Brown, H. Douglas. Brown (2000). Language Assessment; Principles and
Classroom
Practices. Fourth Edition. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
Brown, H.D. 2001. Teaching by Principles: An Active Approach to Language
Pedagogy. (2nd ed). San Francisco: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc
[Link]
Please Answer this and submit to my email: andyencinaresarcilla@[Link] not later
than Monday, November 9, 2020
IV. Worksheet
Student self-reflection
a. What qualities do I possess from the material above in connection with NCBTS
Domain No. 1. Social Regard for Learning?

b. What one quality would describe the materials above to describe my

understanding? Connect your explanation to NCBTS Domain No. 3.
Diversity of Learners.
c. What resources did you use while reading this module? Which ones were
especially helpful? Which ones would you use in your language assessment?

d. One concept I can remember from the this module:

Concept:

Why I remember it:

e. After reading this module, I noticed: