English Words Test VERIFIED

Many of these online tests are timed. The one we are using is one minute. I have many students who seem to have a pretty good general ability to decode, but they get a "way below" score due to the timing issue. Some students are just slow, careful thinkers, and the timing really throws them off. Can you comment on the element of "timing" in assessment in general. It is indicated that fast responses to the test indicate fluency. I'm not so sure....

How biased and discriminatory are these 'tests' for students who speak variations of English? What does the research say about the validity of these tests for students who speak a variety of English that doesn't conform to the 'rules' of mainstream American English? Are we getting, with these nonsense tests or even word identification tests, a true picture of the language competence of students who speak a variety other than MAE?

English Words Test

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Sorry, one more question. We have some students reading above grade level or way above grade level, but they fail the phonics/nonsense word parts of these tests. Should we put them in a group to teach beginning phonics skills?

Hi, Tim. Thank you for the information regarding using nonsense words for assessment purposes. Could you tell me if there is current research that supports incorporating nonsense words in phonics instruction? If there have been studies showing that there is a benefit to using nonsense words as part of instruction or having students practice reading nonsense words to improve their decoding abilities, I would be very interested in reading it. Thank you!

Danna-

No, I am unaware of any such research.

however, teaching phonics with nonsense words is, well, nonsensical. It both invalidates these kinds of assessments and misses (and distracts kids from) the whole point of phonics -- to help kids to read (it even makes it impossible for readers to make the judgments -- is this a word? dies this make sense? -- that are essential to decoding.

tim

Lisa--

Indeed, in grades 2 and 3 it is ORF that is most informative and the best starting point. If students were able to handle 2nd and 3rd grade texts and I wanted more detail about their decoding, my preference would be a word ID test. And, if they were reading much below that I'd feel very comfortable with a nonsense word test. (I lived in the Philadelphia area and rooted heavily for the Phillies at that time.

tim

Lauren--

Just because the test is timed doesn't mean the kids need to know that or that they should be encouraged. They should be encouraged to read the text as well as they can. Second, studies suggest that 3 minute reads provide a better assessment (DIBELS tries to address this by having kids do two 1-minute reads) and combining the results. The longer reading time may reduce the attention to time.

tim

Elizabeth--

You are not finding out anything about the language competence of anyone with these tests. You are finding out how well the students can decode English words. That is important to know with both first and second language students (that's why studies repeatedly show phonics instruction to be beneficial to English Learners). There definitely are other items to be evaluated for all students.

tim

In assessments I have chosen to use many less familiar words such as zap, yam, vim, quill, buff, buff, bog, puck, yen, dusk, yelp, sill, etc., thinking that they are legitimate measures of phonics skills while, at the same time, introducing new vocabulary through their use in sentences that accompany the assessments.

In England, we have had a national Phonics Screening Check since 2012 which is compulsory for all children at the end of their second year of school - the year in which they turn 6. It consists of 20 pseudowords and 20 fairly low-frequency regular real words. Children need to score at least 32 out of 40 or else take the test again a year later. In 2012, only 58% met the standard, but in the last 3 years before the pandemic (2017-19), the figure was up to 82%. There was no testing in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic, and results dropped back to 75% in 2022. The 2023 test materials can be seen here but results have not yet been released:

ww.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-2023-materials

Results in earlier years have been shown to correlated positively with performance in the PIRLS international reading tests done in 2016 and 2021..

"teaching phonics with nonsense words is, well, nonsensical."

Well-yes and no. At what point does an unknown word become a nonsense word? There's a story in one of my first grade decodables that has the words 'fig' and 'jig'--neither of which has meaning for my students until I provide an explanation. But they can decode both. I'm glad Jenny mentioned the UK Phonics Screening Check because it's brilliant. Their nonsense words are monster names next to pictures of the monsters (think Shrek), which makes this assessment more meaningful for students since names are real. I use these monster names to assess my intervention students, and I've never seen them smile as much as they do during this assessment. As for baseball, I regret to announce that my beloved San Francisco Giants have been on a summer-long skid and have lost ground to everyone, including the Phillies.

Important background knowledge for educators as systems adopt phonics screening tests Year 1 en mass, with nonsense words included. It was good to hear the research behind this direction, part of the back to basics emphasis in early reading teaching.

"The only reason I practice nonsense word reading is my ASD students, in particular, struggle with the reasoning behind reading words that are not real and often freeze during testing."

This is why the monster name test in England is a stroke of genius. A name isn't just a nonsense word--it has meaning.

The famous "Stroop Effect" is named after J. Ridley Stroop whodiscovered this strange phenomenon in the 1930s. Here is your job: namethe colors of the following words. Do NOT read the words...rather, saythe color of the words. For example, if the word "BLUE" is printed in ared color, you should say "RED". Say the colors as fast as you can. Itis not as easy as you might think!

The words themselves have a strong influence over yourability to say the color. The interference between the differentinformation (what the words say and the color of the words) your brainreceives causes a problem. There are two theories that may explain the Stroop effect:

I think that this puzzle would be easier for a very young child than forolder children or adults. Try this out on some small kids who know theircolors, but cannot yet read! I would imagine that the children would notget confused by this puzzle because the words would not have any meaning to them.

The Divergent Association Taskis a quick measure of verbal creativityand divergent thinking,the ability to generate diverse solutionsto open-ended problems.The task involves thinking of 10 wordsthat are as different from each otheras possible.For example,the wordscat and dogare similar,but the wordscat and bookare not.People who are more creativetend to generate words that have greater distances between them.These distances are inferred by examininghow often the words are used together in similar contexts.Still,this task measures only a sliver of the complex process of creativity.See the frequently asked questionsfor more details.

We have validated this taskon around 9,000 participantsfrom 98 countries across the world.People who score higher on the task tend to be able to:think of novel and more varied uses for common objects (Alternative Uses Task)find associations between related words (e.g., giraffe and scarf; Bridge-the-Associative-Gap Task)solve more insight and analytical problems

Most people complete the task in under two minutesand the scoring is automatic,making it ideal for online tests and large samples.For more information,see our open-access manuscriptin Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I've heard about a number of different test words or phrases that people use when trying out pens. Of course, scratching out one's own name repeatedly is one way to go. . . You want a pen that'll make your signature look good, and it's a well-practiced motion. Although, I've noticed many signatures are an illegible scribble. Mine isn't. . . not yet anyhow. Maybe if I ever become a published author and have to sign big stacks of books, my signature will degenerate into a mysterious squiggle.

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." I've used this phrase a lot, but it originated from the typewriter. It's possibly the shortest English sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet, so it was good for checking whether a typewriter had any bad keys. (I've also seen it parodied as, "The quick brown fox memorized the alphabet.")

I've found some pens get quite wet when you string together a lot of short strokes, like i, n, m and u. So, I'm testing that, and then I'm throwing some fs at it. I always want to see how a pen can handle that large, fast, up-and-down motion when I make a f. Those are the extremes.

Hi -- I think having a uniform means of sampling FP performance is good for the community, and can be used in FP and even Ink reviews. However, I draw stuff : spirals, loops, cross-hatching, etc. that will see what the nib's up to and if the feed is properly variable & reliable. .. I do agree that for judging the ergonomics of a pen one should be in their usual writing posture with their usual writing surface (clipboard on a crossed knee, writing slope, etc.) and penning what they do the most: numerals, 'science' formulae, ancient Greek, Arabic, charts, graphs, drawings, illustrations, words in cursive or printed or calligraphy... Perhaps only then can a decision or evaluation of a pen be made. --- Bye, S1 2351a5e196