Acquiring Literacy in English:
Crosslinguistic, Intralinguistic, and Developmental Factors
Phonological Transfer Test
Authors and Date
Andrea Rolla San Francisco, formerly of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Diane August, Center for Applied Linguistics. 2002.
Purpose
The Phonological Transfer Test was designed to assess negative phonological transfer in Spanish-English bilingual children.
The test was developed for the research study Transfer of Reading Skills in Bilingual Children, subproject 2 of Acquiring Literacy in English: Crosslinguistic, Intralinguistic, and Developmental Factors.
Age or Grade of Examinees
The assessment was developed to be used for students in kindergarten and first grade.
Description
The test requires students to separate words into phonemic segments. The administrator says a pseudoword, and asks the child to repeat the word and then to say it one sound at a time. There is a line of counters (e.g., pennies) in front of the child, who is asked to push one counter out for each sound in the pseudoword.
Example
Administrator Says... |
Target Response |
Number of Counters Pushed Out |
|---|---|---|
fide |
f-i-de |
3 |
shull |
sh-u-ll |
3 |
chibe |
ch-i-be |
3 |
Administration
The test is individually administered by a trained native English speaker, and the entire task is tape recorded. The assessment generally takes 20 minutes to administer.
Scoring and Interpretation
The items are scored dichotomously as correct or incorrect, based on the number of counters the child pushes forward.
Reliability and Validity
Cronbach's alpha was separately calculated for the monolingual and bilingual children’s dichotomously-scored responses in the pilot study. Cronbach's alpha was .98 for both the monolingual and bilingual children.
Validation data are pending.
Sources
The development of the Phonology Transfer Test was informed by the work of Durgunoglu, Nagy, and Hancin-Bhatt and the work of Yopp.
Durgonoglu, A.Y., Nagy, W.E. & Hancin-Bhatt, B.J. (1993). Cross-language transfer of phonological awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(3), 453-465.
Yopp, H.K. (1995). A test of phonemic awareness in young children. The Reading Teacher, 49, 20-29.
Availability
The Phonological Transfer Test is available from the Center for Applied Linguistics. To request a copy, complete and submit the Application Form for Use of ALE Researcher-developed Assessment Instruments, available in Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF format.
Citation
Researchers using the Phonological Transfer Test should cite it as follows:
Harvard Graduate School of Education and Center for Applied Linguistics. (2002). Phonological Transfer Test. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Return to the list of researcher-developed assessments.