CALT Formal and Informal Assessment for Dyslexia 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A CALT wants to assess a bilingual student's phonological awareness in English while accounting for language background. Which consideration is MOST important when selecting and interpreting assessment tools?
- Administer all tests in Spanish only to reduce English interference
- Use normed assessments validated on monolingual English speakers without modification
- Select measures normed on or validated with bilingual populations and interpret scores with awareness of cross-linguistic transfer (Correct answer)
- Exclude phonological awareness testing entirely if the student is an English language learner
Correct answer: Select measures normed on or validated with bilingual populations and interpret scores with awareness of cross-linguistic transfer
For bilingual students, it is critical to use tools validated with similar populations and to consider how the student's first language may influence phonological processing in English.
Question 2: What is the PRIMARY distinction between a screener and a comprehensive diagnostic battery in dyslexia assessment?
- Screeners identify students who need further evaluation; comprehensive batteries provide detailed profiles of strengths and weaknesses (Correct answer)
- Screeners are more accurate than comprehensive batteries for diagnosis
- Comprehensive batteries can be completed in under 20 minutes; screeners take longer
- Screeners are used only with adults; comprehensive batteries are for children
Correct answer: Screeners identify students who need further evaluation; comprehensive batteries provide detailed profiles of strengths and weaknesses
A screener efficiently flags at-risk students for follow-up, while a comprehensive diagnostic battery provides the in-depth data needed to characterize a student's specific profile.
Question 3: A student earns a standard score of 85 on a single measure of phonological awareness but shows multiple other risk indicators for dyslexia. A CALT should:
- Rule out dyslexia because the phonological score is within one standard deviation of the mean
- Rely solely on that score without additional data
- Consider the score within the full profile of multiple data sources before drawing conclusions (Correct answer)
- Immediately diagnose dyslexia based on the risk indicators alone
Correct answer: Consider the score within the full profile of multiple data sources before drawing conclusions
Assessment requires integrating multiple sources of data; no single score should be used in isolation to confirm or rule out dyslexia.
Question 4: Which of the following informal assessment approaches provides the MOST direct information about a student's knowledge of syllable types during reading?
- Administering a rapid automatized naming task
- Conducting a structured oral reading analysis using words representing each syllable type (Correct answer)
- Analyzing errors on a listening comprehension passage
- Administering a standardized vocabulary test
Correct answer: Conducting a structured oral reading analysis using words representing each syllable type
A structured oral reading probe that includes words representing closed, open, VCe, vowel team, R-controlled, and consonant-le syllables directly reveals which syllable types the student has mastered.
Question 5: A CALT reviews a student's writing sample and notes frequent omission of inflectional endings (e.g., writing 'walk' for 'walked,' 'run' for 'runs'). This pattern is MOST consistent with a deficit in:
- Morphological awareness and orthographic representation of morphemes (Correct answer)
- Basic letter formation and handwriting fluency
- Phonological awareness at the phoneme level
- Visual-spatial processing of letter orientation
Correct answer: Morphological awareness and orthographic representation of morphemes
Omission of inflectional endings indicates difficulty with morphological awareness—the recognition and application of meaningful word parts such as -ed and -s.
Question 6: When a CALT compares a student's word identification standard score to the student's word attack standard score, what specific diagnostic information does this comparison provide?
- It reveals the student's reading comprehension relative to listening comprehension
- It shows whether the student's sight-word recognition is stronger or weaker than phonemic decoding of unfamiliar words (Correct answer)
- It measures rapid automatized naming speed versus phonological memory
- It compares the student's oral reading fluency to silent reading rate
Correct answer: It shows whether the student's sight-word recognition is stronger or weaker than phonemic decoding of unfamiliar words
Word identification measures sight word recognition while word attack measures phonemic decoding of nonsense words; comparing them reveals relative strengths and weaknesses in these two foundational reading skills.
Question 7: A CALT notices that a student's reading accuracy is at the 20th percentile but reading rate is at the 5th percentile. The student reads haltingly with long pauses even on familiar words. This profile MOST strongly suggests a problem with:
- Reading comprehension at the discourse level
- Automaticity and fluency rather than accuracy alone (Correct answer)
- Phoneme segmentation at the pre-alphabetic stage
- Auditory processing of environmental sounds
Correct answer: Automaticity and fluency rather than accuracy alone
When rate is disproportionately lower than accuracy, the core deficit is in automaticity—the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly—which is a hallmark fluency impairment.
CALT Formal and Informal Assessment for Dyslexia 5
A CALT wants to assess a bilingual student's phonological awareness in English while accounting for language background.
Which consideration is MOST important when selecting and interpreting assessment tools?