Abstract
A new matching and coding test has been designed and validated for diagnosing reading ability at the end of Grade 1. The test presents pairs of letters or words projected on a screen. The child is asked to decide whether the two items sound the same or different. Seventy Grade 1 children in a local school, aged 6.6 to 8.0 years, were tested. The correlation between error scores on the coding test and Gray oral reading scores was–.8. Errors ranged from 0% to 61%, and reading scores ranged from 0 to 37 (grade levels of 1.1 through 4.3). The children judged a pair by appearance when they could not sound out the words. There were 49% errors on sound-alike pairs and only 20% errors on different pairs. Most different errors involved confusion between D and b. The central process of learning to read involves learning the various graphemes that may represent each sound.
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Mackworth, J.F. A new reading test for Grade 1. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 6, 143–145 (1975). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333173
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333173