Running head: LANGUAGE AND LITERACY ASSESSMENT

Lab 3: Language and Literacy Assessment in ESL Jo Friesen University of Calgary

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY ASSESSMENT

Method: For this lab, I assessed the following three children:

Rachel, a 4.8 year old female NS student who will enter Kindergarten in September Suzie, a 5.9 year old female NS student who is just finishing Kindergarten Victor, 5.6 year old male ELL student, who is just finishing Kindergarten (first language is Cantonese)

The children were assessed using three instruments and received scores based on the following:
www.getreadytoread.org Screening Tool in English - 20 Questions

o Total Score /20 Literacy Concepts Score /6 Letter Recognition Score /8 Phonics Score: /6 A Boy, A Dog & A Frog Storytelling task o Total Number of Words (TNW) or tokens o Number of Different Words (NDW) or type o Type-Token Ratio o & of words in the first 250 word band o Lexical Plateau (how many bands they used words from before there was a gap) o Lexical Stretch (In which band did they reach 95%+ coverage) Informal Vocabulary Test (Roessingh & Cervatiue) 70 Questions o Ceiling (highest item number tested) o # of Errors o Raw Score (ceiling errors) Raw Score Summary: Rachel 20 (6/8/6) 236 70 0.30 83.9% Band 9 Band 5 70 13 Suzie 20 (6/8/6) 112 53 .47 80.36% Band 7 Band 4 70 12 Victor 15 (4/6/5) 213 64 0.30 84.51% Band 5 Band 5 70 30

Get Ready to Read Scores BDF TNW BDF NDW BDF T-T Ratio BDF - % in first 250 word band BDF Lexical Plateau BDF Lexical Stretch IVT Ceiling IVT - # of Errors

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IVT Raw Score

57

58

40

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Rachel: Rachel is an NS student who will be entering Kindergarten in September and is currently 4 years, 8 months old. She was tested in her own home, at the kitchen table, while her mom worked in the garden. Rachel is well known to me and is very comfortable with me. She was initially nervous about what she would have to do, but once the activities were explained to her, she was eager to participate. She enjoyed all of the tasks and often elaborated on what we were doing (i.e. telling me a story about her neighbours cat when the cat picture came up in the vocabulary test). During the Get Ready to Read assessment, Rachel was a bit uncertain. At one point she told me she was just guessing, however she answered all of the questions correctly with no hesitation as to what might be the correct answer. Her score of 20/20 puts her in the strong category and provided feedback that she was most likely ready to begin learning how to read and write (Get ready to read, n.d.). During the BDF storytelling task, Rachel initially needed some prompting as she had forgotten what the story was, but after reminding her to just tell me a story about what the characters were doing, she happily told her story. The total number of words in Rachels story was 236, she used 70 different words and had a type-token ratio of .30. Of the words she used in the story, 83.9% of them fell into the first 250 word band, she had reached 95% word usage by Band 5 and her words stretched to Band 9. These results put her slightly below the mean results of NS children as per Dr. Roessinghs study (2010). For the IVT, Rachel responded to most questions quite confidently, at one point exclaiming that she was getting them all right (despite the fact that I was not providing feedback on her answers). She did have an answer for all of the pictures, with the exception of badge. She made 13 total errors on the test, which puts her just below the 50 percentile mark for NS students,

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however a number her errors were due different word choice, versus not knowing what the picture was or getting it wrong. For instance, she gave pigeon for bird, oven for stove, lake for bridge, ocean for beach and toes for feet all of which could be considered correct based on the picture given. In interpreting her scores, I would need more information on correct administration of the test, in regards to whether I should score alternative words correctly or if I would be allowed to prompt for the preferred word (e.g. pointing at the sand portion to elicit beach after ocean was given). Overall, Rachel enjoyed the activities and performed quite well. She shows good reading readiness and a strong interest in learning to read. In continuing to prepare Rachel for school, I would encourage her parents to continue to read to and with her. She seemed to gain confidence throughout the storytelling task and may benefit from more opportunities to express her growing skills in this way whether with her parents, or even through encouraging her to read (tell stories based on books) to her sister. She had excellent letter recognition skills and I know her mom is currently working with her on writing her letters, which I would encourage her to continue. I would also recommend her parents use some explicit naming tasks with Rachel during regular daily activities I know her family is very active and taking the time to work on vocabulary in a real world context would help Rachel to build up her word repertoire. Suzie: Suzie is a NS student, who is just finishing Kindergarten. She was 5 years, 9 months at the time of testing. The assessment was done in her own home, while her mom played with her siblings and friend in the next room. While I have met Suzie a few times, she was very shy when I arrived to do the assessment. Initially she declined to participate, but after I visited with her mom

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for a few minutes and then explained what the activities would be, she changed her mind and agreed to participate. Throughout the testing, she was very shy and talked very little. During the Get Ready to Read activity, she spoke very little and would only point to her chosen answer (she did not want to use the mouse herself). She did score 20/20 on the instrument and chose each of her answers without hesitation. During the BDF storytelling task, Suzie was very nervous and spoke very softly. Her responses were terse and generally only related to one page for each two page spread. I prompted her a couple of times to tell me more, but each time she responded with I dont know. Towards the end of the story, she was more relaxed and even giggled a bit when she saw the frog jump into the tub. Suzies TNW was 112, with a NDW score of 53 and a t-t ratio of .47. Band 1 words accounted for 80.36% of her total words and her word coverage stretched to Band 7, with 95% coverage by Band 4. It is interesting to note that although Susies words count was drastically below the mean, her word coverage was much more typical of her peers. Due to her shyness and timidity with the testing situation, I believe that these overall results need to be considered carefully, as they may be more reflective of her emotional state, than her knowledge. It would be interesting to have her repeat this activity with a parent to see if that led to different results. During the IVT, Suzie responded very quickly to the pictures she recognized and stayed silent when she was uncertain. She seemed to get excited when she knew a number of them in a row and then withdrew when she reached a picture she didnt recognize. She completed all of the items and made 12 errors (for a raw score of 58), a couple of which were technically accurate if not correct (coat for jacket, oven for stove). Since she was unresponsive for the ones she did not know, it was difficult to tell if it was a case of not understanding the picture or truly not knowing what the item was.

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Overall, this was a difficult testing situation due to Suzies extreme shyness. She did warm up to me by the end of the visit and I believe if I were to work with her again, she would be more comfortable. Due to her shyness, I think it is difficult to interpret some of the results, particularly for the storytelling task, as I am not certain they were indicative of what she is capable of. In taking with her mom after the assessment, I found out that at the moment, Suzie adamantly does not want to learn to read, which could also factor into her performance on the assessment tasks. Suzies confidence seems quite tied to success, which could also play a role in her desire to read perhaps she isnt confident she will be successful and is therefore nervous to try. I would encourage Suzies parents to work with her on her confidence by encouraging her to try different things and supporting her regardless of her measure of success. In addition to continuing to read and explore books with Suzie themselves, I would encourage them to enlist the help of other adults or older children to work with Suzie, to help her to overcome her shyness. It is important to explore Suzies unwillingness to learn to read to and help her to work through that process before she heads to Grade 1 in September. Victor: Victor is an ELL, who speaks Cantonese at home. He was 5 years, 6 months at the time of testing and is currently finishing Kindergarten. He was tested at the home of his friend and classmate, Suzie, whom he stays with two days a week after school. I met Victor for the first time on the day of the assessment. He was excited to help and to play on the computer. He was outgoing and answered everything with a great deal of enthusiasm, even when he didnt know the answer. Victor really enjoyed the Getting Ready to Read activity and was very excited to use my laptop by himself to do the task. He showed some hesitation with his answers and liked to talk

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through his thinking while making his choices. He scored 15/20 on the task, which put him in the has necessary skills range. His errors were distributed throughout the sub-set of scores (two errors on literacy concepts, two on letter recognition and one on phonics), which demonstrates while he still has room for growth in these areas, there isnt a strong area of concern for him. For the BDF storytelling task, Victor was very enthusiastic. He used hand motions throughout the story and told it in a loud, expressive voice. Compared to the NS students I assessed, Victor took much longer to tell his story. For each page, he studied the picture closely and seemed to really think about what was going on before he shared the next component of his story, which could reflect his need to translate from Cantonese to English, though he also just seemed more engaged in the pictures than the two girls had been (perhaps because he could relate to the content more than they could?). Victors TNW was 213, his NDW was 64 and his t-t ratio was .30. His Band 1 usage was 84.51% and he reached a lexical plateau of Band 5 and lexical stretch of Band 5. During the IVT, Victor again expressed his thinking process out loud before giving answers. He provided commentary for almost all of the questions, even those he did not know. He completed all 70 items, and made 30 errors, although he only expressed that there were 3 that he didnt know. The others he either gave a wrong answer, a close answer (shoes for boots) or said he didnt know the English word. Since I do not speak Cantonese, I was unable to check if he knew the correct answer in Cantonese. In interpreting his results, to be accurate, more information would be needed to determine if he didnt know what some items were at all, or if it was just the English word he didnt know. Overall, Victor was very fun to work with and he was very eager to participate. He was confident regardless of whether he knew the answer or not, and he was very talkative throughout

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the process. For Victor, I would recommend explicit vocabulary naming activities. Since his parents do both speak English, I would encourage them to work to tie more Cantonese and English words together when they are interacting at home. There is also room to work on his letter recognition and phonics skills. As Roessingh (2010) discussed in her research, I found that Victor had little difficulty in conveying the meaning of his message, but these assessments demonstrate the need to help him to develop a wider variety of vocabulary with which to express himself. Since Suzie and Victor play together two days a week after school, and each demonstrates such different strengths, I think it would be interesting to develop activities that they could do together to build up their literacy, such as storytelling and naming games. Conclusion Overall, this was a very interesting activity. It was an excellent way to begin to understand the importance of such things as context and standardization in test administration, and practicing following standardized instructions for giving information. It was also intriguing to see how many factors came into play for each of the children, even in these short, informal testing scenarios such as rapport with the examiner, personality, technology (different interest levels in using the computer) etc. Conducting these assessments also helped me to see how important it is to fully understand the usage and scoring of each instrument (as I was uncertain exactly how to score some items on the IVT when they were close but not accurate), as well as think through some questions around how a childs life experience might affect their results (e.g. none of my students got soldier would a child from a different country get this more readily?). In conducting the BDF storytelling task, I was disappointed to not be able to find the actual book to use. The PDF version I used has somewhat unclear pictures (for instance, the footprints the frog followed were not noticeable on the pdf) and I need to consider that the lack of clear details in

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the pictures may have affected some of the details of the storytelling. Also, I think in terms of reading, it would have been better to have the child have the book in their hands, rather than looking at the computer screen. While Victor seemed to get into the storytelling aspect of it even on the computer, both Rachel and Suzie were very disjointed in their telling and seemed to just be describing the picture instead of telling a story. I wonder if this would have been different if they had a book in their hands. In comparing the results of the students, I found it interesting to note the difference in confidence levels between the two girls and Victor. While obviously this is a very small sample size, it was of interest to me that both girls seemed to allow their confidence to hinge on whether or not they were certain they were right, whereas the one boy I tested was confident just to try and wasnt too concerned with being right. This may be a gender difference, a cultural difference or simply a personality difference, but it was interesting to note. Finally, it was interesting to see some of Roessinghs (2010) research results played out in person. For both my NS, they provided direct information, which got to the point. My ELL student tended to use circumlocution and hand motions, as well as express his thinking process out loud. In analyzing the BDF results, it was interesting to see the wider bands of vocabulary come out for both NS students, even when, in the case of Suzie, significantly fewer words were used overall.

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References Get ready to read! (n.d.). Retrieved from www.getreadytoread.org Roessingh, H. (2010). Early language and literacy development among young ELL: The impact on later reading and writing achievement K-12 and beyond. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from University Calgary Blackboard site: https://blackboard.ucalgary.ca.

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Score sheet
Name: Rachel Date of birth: 10/15/2005 Date today: 06/14/2010 First language spoken: English Childs age today (years and months): 4 Getreadytoread scoring: 1. ____ Literacy concepts 2. ____ Letter recognition 3. ____ Letter recognition 4. ____ Letter recognition 5. ____ Letter recognition 6. ____ Letter recognition 7. ____ Letter recognition 8. ____ Phonics 9. ____ Phonics 10. ____ Phonics 11. ____ Letter recognition 12. ____ Letter recognition 13. ____ Literacy concepts 14. ____ Phonics 15. ____ Phonics 16. ____ Phonics 17. ____ Literacy concepts 18. ____ Literacy concepts 19. ____ Literacy concepts 20. ____ Literacy concepts

and in months: 8 .

17-20 13-16 10-12 7-9 0-6

Strong Has necessary skills Making progress Developing Few of the skills

20

Score: Literacy concepts: 6/6 Letter recognition: 8/8 Phonics: 6/6 TOTAL: 20/20

Boy, dog, frog summary: Words in text (TNW/tokens): 236 NDW (Number of different words/types): 70 t-t ratio (type-token ratio): .30 % of words in the first 250 word band: 83.9% Lexical plateau: (where do you see the first gap? Do not count band 4, the word frog) Band 9 Lexical stretch: How far until we see 95%+ coverage? Band 5 Informal vocabulary test: Ceiling item: 70 Errors: 13 Raw score (ceiling item errors): 57 Interpretation according to guide (for children starting kindergarten): Comment on older children (those starting grade 1):

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Score sheet
Name: Suzie Date of birth: 09/10/2004 Date today: 06/18/2010 First language spoken: English Childs age today (years and months): 5 Getreadytoread scoring: 1. ____ Literacy concepts 2. ____ Letter recognition 3. ____ Letter recognition 4. ____ Letter recognition 5. ____ Letter recognition 6. ____ Letter recognition 7. ____ Letter recognition 8. ____ Phonics 9. ____ Phonics 10. ____ Phonics 11. ____ Letter recognition 12. ____ Letter recognition 13. ____ Literacy concepts 14. ____ Phonics 15. ____ Phonics 16. ____ Phonics 17. ____ Literacy concepts 18. ____ Literacy concepts 19. ____ Literacy concepts 20. ____ Literacy concepts

and in months: 9 .

17-20 13-16 10-12 7-9 0-6

Strong Has necessary skills Making progress Developing Few of the skills

20

Score: Literacy concepts: 6/6 Letter recognition: 8/8 Phonics: 6/6 TOTAL: 20/20

Boy, dog, frog summary: Words in text (TNW/tokens): 112 NDW (Number of different words/types): 53 t-t ratio (type-token ratio): .47 % of words in the first 250 word band: 80.36% Lexical plateau: (where do you see the first gap? Do not count band 4, the word frog) Band 7 Lexical stretch: How far until we see 95%+ coverage? Band 4 Informal vocabulary test: Ceiling item: 70 Errors: 12 Raw score (ceiling item errors): 58 Interpretation according to guide (for children starting kindergarten): Comment on older children (those starting grade 1):

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Score sheet
Name: Victor Date of birth: 12/19/2004 Date today: 06/18/2010 First language spoken: Cantonese Childs age today (years and months): 5 Getreadytoread scoring: 1. ____ Literacy concepts 2. ____ Letter recognition 3. ____ Letter recognition 4. ____ Letter recognition 5. ____ Letter recognition 6. ____ Letter recognition 7. x Letter recognition 8. ____ Phonics 9. Phonics 10. ____ Phonics 11. x Letter recognition 12. ____ Letter recognition 13. ____ Literacy concepts 14. ____ Phonics 15. x Phonics 16. ____ Phonics 17. ____ Literacy concepts 18. ____ Literacy concepts 19. x Literacy concepts 20. x Literacy concepts

and in months: 6 .

17-20 13-16 10-12 7-9 0-6

Strong Has necessary skills Making progress Developing Few of the skills

15

Score: Literacy concepts: 4/6 Letter recognition: 6/8 Phonics: 5/6 TOTAL: 15/20

Boy, dog, frog summary: Words in text (TNW/tokens): 213 NDW (Number of different words/types): 64 t-t ratio (type-token ratio): .30 % of words in the first 250 word band: 84.51% Lexical plateau: (where do you see the first gap? Do not count band 4, the word frog) Band 5 Lexical stretch: How far until we see 95%+ coverage? Band 5 Informal vocabulary test: Ceiling item: 70 Errors: 30 Raw score (ceiling item errors): 40 Interpretation according to guide (for children starting kindergarten): Comment on older children (those starting grade 1):