Ponti Portfolio! - Syntax Assessment

Portfolio 5:

Syntax

Assessment

AnalysisOverview (of what the client was asked to do, what they produced, linguistic areas of strength/weakness including syntax):

As the TOWL or Practice Story Scoring Form indicates, Danielle's elicited narrative exhibits strengths in story composition with notable weaknesses in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and syntax. All great stories share two things which few assessments measure. The first is what Andrew Stanton refers to as the unifying theory of two plus two. The second is that recognizable narrative archetype or story template present in most stories and classical music:

(Act 1) Meet the hero: living in the “ordinary world” the hero receives a call to adventure. Many times, the hero is unsure of following his/her call but is then helped by a mentor figure, who gives counsel and convinces our hero to follow the call.

(Act 2) The hero goes on a quest: The hero enters the “other world,” where (s)he must face a series of tasks until he reaches the climax of the story (the main obstacle). The hero must put into practice everything he has learned on his journey to overcome the obstacle. Often the hero attains a reward for his troubles—a physical thing or wisdom (or both.)

(Act 3) The hero returns home: Feeling like (s)he is ready to go back to the ordinary world, the hero must now leave. Once home, a personal metamorphosis often occurs (the realization of how her/his adventure has changed him/her-self as a person).

Danielle's story has both of these things, they just need to be developed. Danielle's story is comprehensible and conforms to the basic narrative archetype in bold, above. Danielle adds interest to the story through the town's name: "Fishing Rod Village." The lack of continuity make the progression challenging to follow, but the reader can put together how the fire the men of the town faced may have started (replace "fishing" with "lighting"). The development of the climax, exposition of the characters (Sally, Molly, and Tod) motivations and thoughts, and the addition of dynamism to story composition elements would be welcome additions.

Analysis of proficient writers reveals skillful use of prepositional phrases, infinitives, appositives, gerunds and other strategies of structure. Danielle's story is comprehensible and uses coordinating conjunctions. However, her narrative requires relative clauses and subordinating conjunctions for connectedness in ideas and an adequately smooth flow.

Mechanics errors include frequent errors such as run-on sentences, misspelled words, and a lack of proper punctuation. Overall, there's a need for a greater diversity in syntactic structures. Well-organized sentences with center embedded clauses would better connect the content or ideas and better convey the sequence of events. These issues impede clarity and affect the overall flow and readability of the writing.

Strengths and weaknesses of this assessment (TOWL):

The Test of Written Language—Fourth Edition (TOWL-4) is among the most commonly used writing assessment instruments. The TOWL-4 identifies students that have difficulty with written expression and identifies specific areas of strengths and weaknesses. Written expression is one of the most complex forms of expression which requires an integration of reading, listening and speaking skills as well as handwriting, spelling, and idea development, in addition to word usage (Burns & Symington, 2003).

The test of written language demonstrates construct validity by examining its relationship with age, correlations between subtests, associations with intelligence measures, and performance differences between typical and atypical populations. The inclusion of scaled scores and percentiles, along with detailed scoring criteria, facilitates precise assessment and progress tracking, which is essential in clinical practice.

The TOWL-4 provides detailed scoring criteria for each subtest, which reduces subjectivity in scoring. The test measures the student’s ability to write by analyzing a spontaneously composed essay which results in standard scores with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15.

The average internal consistency coefficients for the TOWL-4 for all subtests were .74 or higher. Three composite scores (Contrived Writing, Spontaneous Writing, and Overall Writing) have good to excellent coefficient alpha scores of .84 to .96 (Crimmon & Climie, 2011). This indicates the indicates that it measures what it is intended to measure. Furthermore, the test's reliability is strong, supporting its utility for SLPs in gauging and monitoring written language skills.

The test is well-aligned with the objectives of identifying students in need of support and documenting progress in written language intervention. However, there are some limitations to consider. The TOWL-4 identifies students who write poorly based on a broad spectrum of writing skills, including mechanics, spelling, punctuation, and writing quality.

The TOWL-4 is a well-designed measure that aligns with the goals of speech-language pathology practice in written language assessment and intervention. Its versatility and comprehensiveness make it a valuable resource for SLPs working with individuals who require support in developing written language skills.

"The Hounted House" Analysis

# T-Unit No. of words. No. of clauses

Once thre was a little girl 6 1
and her name was Karen Bewrer. 6 1
And one day she herd noises. 6 1
And she was in a very old house. 8 1
She thouht it was a goast! 6 2
and that is part I(1) 5 1
Skip two lines! 3 1

Part II(2)

She went to her basement! 5 1
What Did She See? A GOST! 6 1
She started to packik 4 1
She Ran to her mom 5 1
And she woke up. 4 1
the morel of the story try not to have Bad Dreams! 11 1

Total Words = 75. 14 = Total

Clauses

Total T-Units produced = 13

Total Clauses produced = 13

MLTU or Mean Length of T-Unit (75 words/13 T-units) = 5.77

Clausal Density (14clauses/13Tunits)= 1.08

"The Hounted House" Interpretation

The first-grader's story shows some promising narrative skills while also displaying areas for improvement. In terms of sentence complexity, the story primarily consists of simple sentences, which is expected at the first-grade level. There are occasional attempts to vary sentence structure. however, transitions between events are abrupt, and the story could benefit from more relative clauses and descriptive details to enhance flow and the reader's understanding of the setting, characters, and emotions.

In terms of narrative skills, the story has a basic structure with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It introduces the protagonist, Karen Brewer, and sets the scene in an old house, which creates a sense of place and atmosphere. The conflict arises when Karen thinks she hears a ghost, adding tension to the story. This leads to her exploring the basement, where she encounters the ghost, providing a climax and resolution when she wakes up. The story attempts to convey a moral lesson at the end, suggesting that one shouldn't have bad dreams.

With continued practice and guidance, Katie can increase sentence complexity by combining sentences using subordination. Additionally, the moral lesson could be made more explicit and connected to the events of the story, providing a more coherent message. There is room for improvement in terms of transitions, descriptive details, and the integration of the moral lesson into the narrative.

References

Burns, M. K., & Symington, T. (2003). A Comparison of the Spontaneous Writing Quotient of the Test of Written Language (3rd ed.) and Teacher Ratings of Writing Progress. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 28(2), 29–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/073724770302800203

McCrimmon, A. W., & Climie, E. A. (2011). Test Review: D. D. Hammill & S. C. Larsen “Test of Written Language-Fourth Edition.” (TOWL-4). Austin, TX--PRO-ED, 2009. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 29(6), 592–. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734282911406646