Assessment Activity - Language Assessment

Introduction
Assessment is a critical element of education as it allows for the monitoring, learning, creation of educational programs, and the identification of pupils who require specific services. For deaf and hard hearing learners, participating in meaningful education tests is a multifaceted and complex process (Pizzo & Chilvers, 2019). Assessments that are done well will support growth and learning, while poorly and inaccurately designed assessments have the potential to cause wrong decision-making in schools for deaf and hard of hearing learners. This report, therefore, presents three language assessment instruments for deaf and hard of hearing learners, namely Arizona™-4: Arizona Articulation and Phonology Scale™ Fourth Revision, The American Sign Language Proficiency Assessment (ASL-PA), and Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language—Fourth Edition (TACL-4).
Report 1: Arizona Articulation and Phonology Scale™, Fourth Revision
? Name of Test: Arizona™-4: Arizona Articulation and Phonology Scale™, Fourth Revision
? Author(s): Fudala, Janet Barker, and Stegall, Sheri
? Publisher's Name and Address: Western Psychological Services. 625 Alaska Avenue, Torrance, CA 90503-5124; Telephone: 800-648-8857; FAX: 424-201-6950; E-mail: [email protected]; Web: http://www.wpspublish.com
? Date of Publication: 2017
? Purpose of Test: The primary purpose of this assessment tool is to evaluate articulatory and phonology capabilities for the target age bracket. Arizona?4 is used for the measurement of speech intelligibility, phonological impairment, and articulatory impairment.
Secondary purposes of the instrument are to;
· Understand and describe the level of an individual's articulatory capability and the general speech intelligence for both sing word and connected speech
· Compare an individual's abilities for single-word and connected speech articulation
· Determine the level to which language sound impairment might affect the individuals' articulation deficient and determine the particular types of sound error patterns that present
· Facilitate the early identification of phonological development challenges and establish whether treatment services would be beneficial
· Identify and prioritize speech goals for customized intervention by analyzing the specific language deficient the individual presents
· Monitor improvement in the speech of an examinee throughout the intervention
· Evaluate the degree to which misarticulated sounds present for an individual and determine the effect of these challenges to everyday speech and whether additional assessment or intervention is needed (Fudala & Stegall, 2017).
? Target population(s): the target population needs speech and source services within a clinical setting. There is a need to design and develop treatment plans for them.
? Target Age Range: 18 months to 21 years, 11 months
? Skills/Knowledge tested: Word Articulation, Phonology, and Sentence Articulation
? Test Administration format: Manually by an individual
? Length of Time required: 5–20 minutes
? Type of data obtained (raw score, standard score, etc.): The Arizona?4 offers five scores as follows:
· The percentage of speech improvement score for retesting
· Total scores and the related speech intelligibility and understanding values
· Standard scores and the related severity ranges for the extent of articulatory and phonological impairment
· The articulation of work?sentence and the critical difference score
· The percentage of happenings for phonological error and their patterns
? Personal Evaluation: (What would be the strengths and weaknesses of using this test with deaf/hard of hearing students?)
Strengths
This assessment instrument provides clinicians and educators with a quick, reliable, and a well?standardized measurement for the articulation of language?sound that helps the users to identify individuals that require articulation and phonological services. The kit is available in various packages with varying pricing to suit the various uses and needs (Fudala, 2000). The tool has supplemental qualitative tasks which help for in-depth interpretation of the scores, thus help clinicians develop treatment plans that are personalized to the individual.
Weaknesses
Interpreting the scores might be difficult for individual teachers, parents, and interviewees. Often a clinician with experience on the tool will be required to interpret the report.
Report 2: The American Sign Language Proficiency Assessment (ASL-PA)
? Name of Test: The American Sign Language Proficiency Assessment (ASL-PA)
? Author(s): Maller, Susan J., Singleton, Jenny L., Supalla, Samuel J., and Wix, Tina.
? Publisher's Name and Address: Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA.
? Date of Publication: 1999
? Purpose of Test: the purpose was to develop an assessment tool that determines the level of ASL skills for deaf and hard of hearing children determine their acquisition process. Additionally, this assessment instrument sought to assess a wide range of linguistic structures within ASL. The goals of ASL-PA are, too;
· Be fairly efficient in its administration and analysis and show firm evidence for properties concerning psychometric. This goal is significant, especially given the fact that no tool has been developed that reports psychometric properties in the assessment of ASL proficiency of deaf and hard of hearing children.
· Be a screening tool rather than a linguistic tool and provide deep investigations to assess a wide range of linguistic structures.
· It is meant for the observation and subsequent monitoring of the process of acquisition in deaf and hard of hearing learners over some time (Maller et al., 1999).
? Target population(s): Elementary schools non-native children experiencing deafness or hard of hearing.
? Target Age Range: 6-12 years
? Skills/Knowledge tested: morphological processes, linguistic processes, semantic processes, syntactic processes, and narrative abilities in ASL.
? Test Administration format: individual, manual
? Length of Time required: 30 Minutes to administer, and 1-2 hours to code and score.
? Type of data obtained (raw score, standard score, etc.): ASL-PA seeks to identify linguistic structures. The scoring is meant to review mainly eight morphosyntactic structures of American Sign Language;
i. One-sign/two-sign expressions (single unit sign, ten divergent sign, and two sign construction)
ii. Non-manual markers (questions with yes/no, the question on wh-, conditional, and topic)
iii. Deictic pointing (abstract indexing and real-life indexing)
iv. Reference shifting (shifting of role and position of multiple roles)
v. Motion verbs (basic path movement, primary object classifier handshape, and secondary subject classifiers of handshape)
vi. Number and aspects (distribution, aspect, and duality)
vii. Agreement verbs (inflection agreement verb reveals two aspects: abstract location and real-life location marked)
viii. Pairs of noun-verbs (production of multiple noun-verb and constructions of noun-verb pair) (Haug, 2005).
? Personal Evaluation: (What would be the strengths and weaknesses of using this test with deaf/hard of hearing students?)
Strengths
· It is a globally acknowledged and used tool for the assessment of the child's expressive ASL providence ability
· Samples of language are obtained from various discourse contexts
· It can be administered and analyzed efficiently
· The targets/items features are oriented to ASL acquisition studies
· It allows for the investigation of psychometric properties
· It can be easily administered in an education setting for deaf and hard of hearing learners
Weaknesses
· It has a limited age bracket, only between 6 and 12 years.
· It requires a knowledgeable tester with experience on ASL linguistic structure
· The study doesn't have large sample norms that are presently available.
Report 3: Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language—Fourth Edition (TACL-4)
? Name of Test: Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language—Fourth Edition (TACL-4)
? Author(s): Carrow-Woolfolk, Elizabeth
? Publisher’s Name and Address: PRO-ED, 8700 Shoal Creek Blvd., Austin, TX 78757-6897; Telephone: 800-897-3202; FAX: 800-397-7633; E-mail: [email protected]; Web: http://www.proedinc.com
? Date of Publication: 2014
? Purpose of Test: the TACL-4 is designed to evaluate the receptive language proficiency of learners who have problems communicating orally. To achieve this purpose, the
? Target population(s): children experiencing difficulties communicating orally.
? Target Age Range: 3-0 through 12-11
? Skills/Knowledge tested: TACL-4 measures three language forms;
· Vocabulary – what is the meaning of verbs, nouns, adverbs, and adjectives and that of words that represent basic concepts and percepts
· Grammar morphemes – what are the meanings of function words, for example, pronouns, prepositions, and determiners, and inflections, for example, bound morphemes, e.g., noun case and number, verb tense and number, an agreement between noun and verb, and derivative suffixes.
· Elaborated phrases and sentences – what is the meaning of sentence constructions, word relations, and elaborated phrases that are syntactically based as well as the modalities of combined and single productions (e.g., negative sentences, interrogative sentences, passive and active voice, and indirect and direct object), partially and fully conjoined sentences, and embedded sentences (Carrow-Woolfolk & Allen, 2014).
? Test Administration format: Individual, manual. The individual has to indicate which of the three images on a card best illustrates the meaning of a word, syntactic structure, and morpheme.
? Length of Time required: 20 to 30 minutes
? Type of data obtained (raw score, standard score, etc.): percentage ranks, standard scores, and equivalents of age
? Personal Evaluation: (What would be the strengths and weaknesses of using this test with deaf/hard of hearing students?)
Strengths
· It is a reliable and valid tool for measuring a learner's reception to spoken vocabulary, syntax, and grammar and helps in the designing of an intervention
· The proposed intervention is customized to the specific needs of the individual learner
· It provides age-related entry points, ceiling, and basal, which ensure that the time needed for testing is kept at the minimum and the learner is tested for the items that are optimal for their capability level (Carrow-Woolfolk, 2014)
· For each item in the assessment, it has been reevaluated using conventional item analyses to allow for both good items and the differential analyses, which help find and eradicate any potentially biased items
· It is fairly recent as the normative language was collected in 2012 and 2013.
Weaknesses
· The test allows for only a limited and fairly narrow age bracket, three years to 12 years, and this is even though this age bracket has been expended in the fourth edition.
· Interpretation of the results would require an expert with the ASL tool.
Conclusion
This discussion involves three assessment instruments 1) Arizona™-4: Arizona Articulation and Phonology Scale™ Fourth Revision, 2) The American Sign Language Proficiency Assessment (ASL-PA), and 3) Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language—Fourth Edition (TACL-4). These assessment instruments were chosen to represent the various aspects of deaf and hard of hearing, namely, oral, signage, and both. The Arizona-4 test was selected to represent the oral aspect, ASL-PA was selected to represent the sign language aspect, and TACL-4 was selected to represent auditory and sign language. For all the three tests, they are easy to administer as they can be administered with the examinee, and they each come with a manual. However, scoring each is complex as an experienced person is required to interpret the results.
Assessment tests can be either norm-referenced or criterion-referenced. For all the three tests included in this paper, they are norm-referenced. Norm-referenced tests are those that usually cover a broad range of content, but they often mismatch what is taught, and that is tested (Bond, 1996). Norm-referenced tests are used for the comparisons of individual performance to that of a group. On the other hand, criterion-referenced assessments are used to determine how well the examinee has mastered a particular leaning objective (Bond, 1996). For criterion-referenced tests, the performance of an examinee is judged on how close the performance matches a particular criterion and not how the student compares to others.
References
Bond, L. A. (1996). Norm-and criterion-referenced testing. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation, 5(1), 2.
Carrow-Woolfolk, E. (2014). Test for auditory comprehension of language (4th ed.). Austin, TX: PRO-ED.
Carrow-Woolfolk, E., & Allen, E. A. (2014). TEXL: Test of expressive language. Austin, TX: PRO-ED.
Fudala, J.B. & Stegall, S. (2017). Arizona-4: Arizona Articulation and Phonology Scale, Fourth Revision. Western Psychological Services.
Fudala, J.B. (2000). Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.
Haug, T. (2005). Review of sign language assessment instruments. Sign Language & Linguistics, 8(1-2), 61-98.
Maller, S., Singleton, J., Supalla, S., & Wix, T. (1999).  The development and psychometric properties of the American Sign Language Proficiency Assessment (ASL-PA). Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 4(4), 249-269.
Pizzo, L., & Chilvers, A. (2019). Assessment of Language and Literacy in Children Who Are d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Education Sciences, 9(3), 223.