Phonological Segmentation

Assessment Is Not Enough: A

Comparison of Three
Phonological Awareness Tests
With First and Second Graders

Jessica Mehorter
Citation
Kilpatrick, D. A. (2012). Phonological segmentation assessment is
not enough: A comparison of three phonological awareness tests
with first and second graders. Canadian Journal of School
Psychology, 27(2), 150–165.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0829573512438635
 Purpose and General Rationale
What is the best practice of phonological awareness assessments for identifying
phonological awareness difficulties contributing to reading progress?

• Word-level reading is highly associated with a student’s level of phonological awareness

• Author (David A. Kilpatrick) recognized when giving hundreds of CTOPP assessments to

elementary students being referred for reading difficulties that “ approximately half of
these students performed at or above the 50th percentile on the segmentation test,
while an estimated 80% of these same students performed low average to below
average on the manipulation task (Kilpatrick, 2012, p153).
Fit and Specific Rationale
• Rarely addressed
• Whether one phonological test or task is better for understanding if poor
phonological awareness skills are impacting a student’s reading progress

• Two other studies: Chafouleas et. Al. (1997) and Swank and Catts (1994)
• It was still unclear which phonological awareness test or task is best for
identifying students with phonological awareness difficulties.

• Phonological segmentation is the only part of phonological awareness tested on

many tests and batteries
• DIBELS, AIMSweb, PALS, Yopp-Singer
Participants
Author: David A. Kilpatrick
• Assistant professor of psychology at State University of New York
• Part-time school psychologist with East Syracuse-Minoa School District
• Research interests: development of word recognition and phonological
processes in reading disabilities
• Doctorate degree from Syracuse University

School psychologist: Collected all data

1st Graders Both 2nd Graders

• 67 (30 female and 37 male)
• 5 identified with reading disability
• Lower-middle class • 49 (23 female and 26 male)
• Recruited participants • 8 identified with reading disability
• No visual, hearing, or cognitive
disabilities
• English native speakers
Context
Where?

• Suburban elementary school

• Upstate New York

• 94% of students in the school district are white

 Steps in Sequence
All students were given the same tests in the same order:
1st step: 2nd step:

CTOPP WRMT-R

1. Elision 3. Segmenting Words

- Deleting a - Separately words by Word Identification: Word Attack:
sound from a individual sounds in
word order
Grade level word list Pseudowords
- Increases in - Two phoneme words (seeg, trast)
complexity to words with more
2. Blending Words phonemes
- Reading a word by
its parts
- Increases in
complexity
Data
CTOPP:
1. Elision
2. Blending words
3. Segmenting words

WRMT-R:
• Word lists at grade level (Word Identification) and pseudowords (Word Attack)

Students were…
• Taken from independent work
• Tested in the hallway outside of their classroom
• Tested for about 15 minutes
• Administered tests from December to March

School psychologist collected all data.

Analysis

• Raw scores

• Standard scores used for normative comparison

• Both scores used to show intercorrelation

• Hierarchical multiple regression to discover relationships among the measures

• Word Identification as dependent variable
• Word Attack as dependent variable
Results
• At the 1st and 2nd grade levels
• All phonological awareness tests highly correlated with Word Identification and Word Attack.
• Segmenting Words had the lowest correlation
• Elision, Blending Words, and Segmenting Words are highly intercorrelated (except in 2nd grade
for Elision and Segmenting Words)
• No unique variance between Segmenting Words and Blending Words

• At the 1st grade level

• Unique variance with Segmenting words and Blending Words when Segmenting Words and
Elision were included

• Segmenting Words did not contribute a unique amount of difference like

Blending Words and Elision each did.
Conclusions
 Elision, Blending Words, and Segmenting Words tests should not be given alone
when testing phonological awareness, especially segmentation.

 After 1st grade, Segmenting Words does not show as much correlation with reading
growth.

 When a student does well on segmentation tasks but not on manipulation tasks and
blending tasks, that student is likely to still have difficulty with phonological
awareness.

 With struggling readers, segmentation tasks may not point to the student having
trouble with phonological awareness.
Cautions

Only 1 and
st
Concurrent
2 graders
nd
measures
were tested
Discussions
• If phonological segmentation has a weaker correlation with word-level reading skill
after 1st grade, why is this type of test being used as the primary source for testing
phonological awareness difficulties in schools?

• More research needs to be done on which tests are best practice for showing a
student’s ability of phonological awareness.

• What other research has been conducted to inform educators on the best practices of
phonological awareness assessments?