The Names Test: A Quick Assessment of Decoding AbilityAuthor(s): Pat CunninghamSource: The Reading Teacher, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Oct., 1990), pp. 124-129Published by: International Reading AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20200565 .Accessed: 11/04/2011 18:14

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Pat Cunningham _

The Names Test:

A quick

assessment

of decoding ability

Cunningham is a professor of Education at Wake Forest University in WinstonSalem, North Carolina.

She has conducted research and

written widely on the topics of teaching and assessing decoding abilities.

My goals for reading instruction are

for children to enjoy reading, to

learn through reading, and to think about what they read. To achieve these goals, it is essential that readers be able to recognize

words. For fluent reading, the majority of words encountered should be sight words, that

is, words that are immediately recognized and that require none of the mediation (e.g., de

coding) that may interfere with comprehen sion (Perfetti & Lesgold, 1979; Samuels &

LaBerge, 1983). Even proficient readers, however, en

counter words that are in their listening vocab

ularies but unfamiliar in print. In Beginning to

Read, Adams (1990) estimates that 95% of the different words that children must read occur

fewer than 10 times in every million words of text. These words are encountered fewer than 10 times in a whole year's worth of reading. To

become good readers, children must have

strategies for figuring out unfamiliar words such as using context, structural clues, and

knowledge of letter-sound relationships. While most readers use all three mediation

strategies, younger and less proficient readers tend to depend more on context (Stanovich, 1980). Stanovich suggests that these less profi

cient readers use context to make up for a defi

cit in letter-sound decoding skill; the overuse of

context, however, slows down the reader and takes attention away from reading comprehen sion. According to Stanovich, good readers are

more able to rapidly decode words without us

ing context. He concludes that this ability ap pears to promote fluent reading. The ability to

decode unfamiliar words using only letter sound relationships is thus recognized as an

important goal of reading instruction. Adams (1990) reviews and analyzes dec

ades of research and makes a convincing case

for the necessity of rapid, automatic decoding. She concludes that "In summary, deep and

thorough knowledge of letters, spelling pat terns, and words, and of the phonological translations of all three, are of inescapable im

portance to both skillful reading and its acqui sition" (p. 416).

Limitations of existing decoding tests

In order to effectively enhance students'

decoding skills, teachers must know some

thing about their ability to decode words.

There are many phonics tests available, but most of these assessment devices are group

124 The Reading Teacher Vol. 44, No. 2 October 1990

paper-and-pencil tests. Tasks such as writing the beginning letters under pictures, indicat

ing whether vowels are long or short, and di

viding words into syllables are commonly used. Children who can spell the words find

these tasks easy, but the tasks may indicate

their spelling knowledge (i.e., encoding abil

ity) rather than their knowledge of letter

sound relationships (i.e., decoding ability).

Many children who score well on these

paper-and-pencil tasks cannot apply their de

coding skills to actually pronounce unfamiliar

words. Teachers say that children "know the

skills but just don't use them." Unfortunately,

paper-and-pencil tests can only assess if chil

dren know certain letter-sound associations, not whether they can apply letter-sound

knowledge to unfamiliar words.

A more valid way to decide if a child can

decode unfamiliar words is to have the child

attempt to read unfamiliar words. This proce dure takes only a few minutes for each child

and will yield useful information about the child's decoding ability if an appropriate word list is used. Choosing or creating such a word

list, however, is a complex task.

If common or high frequency words are

used, the reader may know them as sight words; thus, one is not assessing decoding

ability. The validity of nonsense word tests is

questionable because many children refuse to

even try to pronounce nonsense words or, when they do pronounce them, they turn them

into real words. Further, an important part of

the decoding process is knowing when to stop; readers generally stop when they arrive at a

pronunciation which is a word they know. A

nonsense word task violates this expecta tion and thus may not be a valid indicator of

decoding ability (Cunningham, 1975-76; Cunningham, 1976).

Lists could be constructed from less fa

miliar, low-frequency words. This is probably the best solution, but it is difficult to select the

words. For students who have small listening vocabularies, these low-frequency words will

not be meaningful; thus, trying to read a word

that is not in one's listening vocabulary creates

the same problem created by nonsense words.

An alternate test of decoding ability There is one type of word, however, that

is not often seen in print but can be found in

most children's listening vocabularies: per

sons' names. As children watch television and

movies and interact with peers and adults in

their neighborhoods and schools, they are

constantly hearing first and last names that

they don't see in print. As a result, most chil

dren have many more names in their listening vocabularies than in their reading vocabu

laries. This provides an ideal source of words

for use in assessing decoding skills. The pur

pose of this article is to describe the develop ment of and uses for the Names Test, a test of

decoding ability.

A more valid way to decide if a child can decode unfamiliar words is to have the child attempt to read unfamiliar words. This procedure takes only a few minutes

for each child and %mll yield useful information about the child's decoding ability if an appropriate word list is used.

Test development My goal was to create a list of 25 first and

last names which, when paired, would look

like a classroom list and would validly mea

sure children's ability to decode unfamiliar

words. Telephone books, baby books, and

other sources containing names were con

sulted and 62 names were selected that met

four criteria:

1. The names are not some of the most

common names. For first names, all names

were checked against the "top names for boys and girls" listed in The New American Diction

ary of First Names (Dunkling & Gosling, 1985). Any names found there were excluded.

For last names, any names that had more than

a column of listings in three local telephone books were excluded.

2. The names are fully decodable given

commonly taught vowel rules and/or analogy

approaches to decoding. For example, Blake

could be decoded using the "vowel/consonant/

e" rule or by analogy by comparing it to a

known word such as make or snake. The sylla bles in Pendergraph could be decoded using vowel/consonant rules or by recognizing the

The Names Tfest: A quick assessment 125

3

It takes little time to administer The Names Test to a student. Photo by Robert Finken

common syllables pen and graph and then by

using the der/her analogy. Because the place ment of accent varies with dialect and geo

graphic region, no attempt was made to

determine which syllable should be accented

when constructing the test, and students were

considered to have correctly decoded polysyl labic words regardless of which syllable they accented. Syllables which would have had the

schwa sound (/?/) if not accented were consid

ered correct if pronounced as schwa or if pro nounced with the sound that syllable would

have if the syllable were accented.

3. The names represent a good sampling

of the most common English spelling patterns. While the test could not contain enough items

to make reliable assessments for all letter

sound correspondences, it was designed so

that teachers could identify particular areas of

strengths or weaknesses. Thus, names were

included with single initial consonants (e.g.,

Jay, Tim, Gus), with initial blends (e.g., Stan

ley, Glen, Grace), and with common conso

nant digraphs (e.g., Chester, Shaw, Whitlock,

Thornton). The variant sounds of c and g were

represented by the names Conway, Cornell,

Cindy, Spencer, Gus, Glen, and Ginger. Names were included for all short vowels and

all long vowels except /?7 (the least common

long vowel). In addition, names were included

to represent common phonograms (e.g., Jay, Tim, Chuck, Hoke). The intent was to include

enough examples of initial consonants, blends

and digraphs, long and short vowels, and pho

nograms so that conclusions might be drawn

about students' decoding ability of these types of letter-sound relationships.

4. The names represent a balance of short

and long words. While it was easy to find names of one and two syllables, three syllable names that met the "fully decodable" criterion

were scarce and no names of four or more syl lables could be found. After field testing (see following section), the Names Test consisted

of 23 one-syllable names, 19 two-syllable

126 The Reading Tfeacher Vol. 44, No. 2 October 1990

Procedures for administering and scoring the Names Test

Preparing the instrument

1. Type or print legibly the 25 names on a sheet of paper or card stock. Make sure the print size is

appropriate for the age or grade level of the students being tested.

2. For students who might perceive reading an entire list of names as being too formidable, type or

print the names on index cards, so they can be read individually. 3. Prepare a protocol (scoring) sheet. Do this by typing the list of names in a column and following

each name with a blank line to be used for recording a student's responses.

Administering the Names Test

1. Administer the Names Test individually. Select a quiet, distraction-free location.

2. Explain to the student that she or he is to pretend to be a teacher who must read a list of names of students in the class. Direct the student to read the names as if taking attendance.

3. Have the student read the entire list. Inform the student that you will not be able to help with diffi cult names, and encourage him or her to "make a guess if you are not sure." This way you will have sufficient responses for analysis.

4. Write a check on the protocol sheet for each name read correctly. Write phonetic spellings for names that are mispronounced.

Scoring and interpreting the Names Test

1. Count a word correct if all syllables are pronounced correctly regardless of where the student

places the accent. For example, either Yo*7lan/da or Yo/lan7da would be acceptable. 2. For words where the vowel pronunciation depends on which syllable the consonant is placed with, I

count them correct for either pronunciation. For example, either Ho/mer or Hom/er would be ac

ceptable.

3. Count the number of names read correctly, and analyze those mispronounced, looking for pat terns indicative of decoding strengths and weaknesses.

names, and 8 three-syllable names.

Using these four criteria, 31 first and 31

last names were selected and paired to form a

class list of 31 names for field testing.

Field testing A test is useful only if it is valid and reli

able. Validity refers to a test's ability to mea

sure what it purports to measure. Reliability refers to the ability of a test to consistently

measure this trait. To gain some information

about the reliability and validity of the Names

Test, it was administered to 120 randomly se

lected second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students in two schools. The sample consisted

of 30 children at each grade level, was made

up of equal numbers of boys and girls, and

contained 35 minority students. The Names

Test was prepared and individually adminis

tered to these students according to the proce dures presented in the Table.

The responses of the 120 students to the

62 items (there were 31 first and 31 last names

in the field-tested version of the instrument)

The Names Test

Jay Conway Tim Cornell Chuck Hoke Yolanda Clark

Kimberly Blake Roberta Slade Homer Preston Gus Quincy Cindy Sampson Chester Wright Ginger Yale Patrick Tweed

Stanley Shaw

Wendy Swain Glen Spencer Fred Sherwood Flo Thornton Dee Skidmore Grace Brewster Ned Westmoreland Ron Smitherman

Troy Whjtlock Vance Middleton Zane Anderson Bernard Pendergraph

were analyzed to yield 62 item-test correla

tions. To increase reliability and reduce the

number of items on the test, the 6 first names

and the last 6 names with the lowest item-test

correlations were eliminated. On the final set

of 50 items (25 first and 25 last names shown in the List), a statistic of internal-consistency

reliability (Kuder-Richardson 20) was com

puted. The resultant KR-20 reliability of the

The Names Tfest: A quick assessment 127

Names Test was .98, a high reliability esti

mate.

Validity of a test can be established in a

variety of ways. The criteria described previ

ously under test development represent one

way of establishing construct validity, which

is the degree to which a test measures the psy

chological or behavioral ability being evalu

ated, in this case children's ability to decode

words containing common spelling patterns. Another type of validity can be demon

strated based on the different performance of

the second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students. Since decoding ability increases

greatly in the early elementary grades and

then tops out in later grades, a valid test

should result in much lower scores at the sec

ond-grade level and almost perfect scores at

the fifth-grade level. The results of the field

test indicated that this was indeed the case.

For the 50 first and last names, the average score for the second grade was 22.6, whereas

the average fifth-grade score was 47.3. More

revealing is the fact that the lowest score

achieved by any fifth grader was 40.

The Names Test is a tool that teachers can use to obtain information about

how well students decode words which are apt to be in their listening vocabularies but not in their sight vocabularies. It was developed to

provide teachers with another tool to use in diagnosing this important component of reading ability.

Making instructional decisions There are a variety of ways that teachers

might use the information obtained from ad

ministering the Names Test. Teachers at sec

ond-, third- or fourth-grade levels might choose to give the test to all their students at

the beginning of the year to get some initial

impressions of the decoding ability of individ

ual children and the class as a whole. Perhaps a more economical use of time would be to ad

minister the test only to children who demon

strate some decoding difficulties in their

reading. Remedial and special teachers could

also use the Names Test to gain some informa

tion about the decoding abilities of students

experiencing difficulty with reading. While no norms have been established for

the test, the field testing did confirm that the

average second grader read a little less than

half the names correctly (x=22.6) and the av

erage fifth grader pronounced almost all the names correctly (x=47.3). Second-grade teachers should probably not be too concerned

about children who can pronounce most of the

one-syllable names but who experience diffi

culty with the longer names. Fourth graders, however, should be able to pronounce most of

the short names and a good number of the

long names.

In addition to getting a general impres sion of how successful students are at de

coding words, teachers can obtain some

diagnostic information based on patterns of errors. While there are not enough items on

the test to make judgments about individual

letter-sound correspondences, judgments can

be made if children make similar errors on

many words. Here are some of the error pat terns observed in the field testing:

Some students, particularly the second

graders, wouldn't even try the long words. Other students pronounced

only the first syllable of the big words

(e.g., Con for Conway, Corn for Cor

nell). A few students guessed a big word that started like the big word

(e.g., Connors for Conway, Kevin for

Kimberly). These students might bene

fit from instruction in decoding longer words.

A few older students were quite suc

cessful with one- and two-syllable words but couldn't do the three-syllable words. Pendergraph became Pender or

Pengraph; Westmorelandbecame West more or Westland. These students

might also benefit from instruction in

decoding longer words.

Some students were successful at most

initial consonants and digraphs, but

had difficulty with words that began with blends. Tweed became Teed;

Spencer became Pencer; Skidmore be came Sidmore or Kidmore. These

students might benefit from some in

struction with blends.

128 The Reading Teacher Vol. 44, No. 2 October 1990

A few children pronounced most long vowel names ending with e (Hoke, Blake, Yale, Slade) using a short vowel

sound. These students might benefit

from learning words with the "vowel/

consonant/e" spelling pattern. Other children seemed to have little or

no understanding of vowel patterns.

They got the first consonant right and

guessed the rest (e.g., Chuck, became

Chad; Ned became Nick; Ron became

Roy). These students might benefit

from instruction with common spelling

patterns/phonograms. Not all children exhibited these clear pat

terns, but the ones that did gave indications of

what decoding knowledge they lacked and what

strategies teachers could help them develop.

Limitations and conclusions There are some limitations of the Names

Test. First, the lack of additional words of

three or more syllables and the fact that names

could not be found for several common sylla bles (e.g., tion, ture) limits the usefulness of

the Names Test with older and more skilled

readers. Another limitation is the lack of eth

nic names. Unfortunately, ethnic names could

not be found which met the "decodable" crite

rion; thus, this test may be inappropriate for

children for whom English is not their first

language.

The Names Test is a tool that teachers can

use to obtain information about how well stu

dents decode words that are apt to be in their

listening vocabularies but not in their sight vo

cabularies. It was developed to provide teach

ers with another tool to use in diagnosing this

important component of reading ability. Teachers are invited to use or modify the list

and directions provided here to suit their

needs.

References

Adams, M.J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and

learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cunningham, P.M. (1975-76). Investigating a synthesized

theory of mediated word identification. Reading Re

search Quarterly, 11, 127-143.

Cunningham, P.M. (1976). Can decoding skills be validly assessed using a nonsense-word pronunciation task?

Reading Improvement, 13, 247-248.

Dunkling, L, & Gosling, W. (1985). The new American dic

tionary of first names. New York: New American Li

brary. Perfetti, CA., & Lesgold, A.M. (1979). Coding and com

prehension in skilled reading and implications for read

ing instruction. In L.B. Resnick & P. A. Weaver (Eds.),

Theory and practice of early reading (pp. 57-84). Hills

dale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Samuels, S.J., & LaBerge, D. (1983). A critique of a the

ory of automaticity in reading: Looking back: A retro

spective analysis of the LaBerge-Samuels reading model. In L. Gentile, M. Kamil, & J. Blanchard (Eds.),

Reading research revisited (pp. 39-55). Columbus, OH:

Merrill.

Stanovich, K. (1980). Toward an interactive-compensatory model of individual differences in the development of reading fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 37

71.

The Names Test: A quick assessment 129