Designed to measure attitudes toward reading at any specific point and to measure changes in attitude toward reading, this instrument consists of twenty items selected from "An Inventory of Reading Attitude" devised by the Department of Education in San Diego, California. These items were modified by being stated in behavioral terms and…

Designed to index the kinds of meaning relationships that children perceive to exist between words and their references, this test consists of 276 pairs comprising 24 categories. For each item of the test, the subjects were asked to rank each pair of statements depending on how well they thought the words on the left were described. Content…

This unit of study introduces high-ability intermediate-grade students to the aspect of grammar which is usually missing from technically oriented studies of grammar, namely, the wonder and pleasure of grammar or grammar appreciation. It presents grammar as a powerful way for one's mind to make ideas out of language, and a way of inspecting one's…

Designed to assess the ability of subjects to apply concrete operations to data in a reading format, and to determine if there is any difference with regard to type of paragraph or type of question, this test consists of four short paragraphs, each of which established one of the following operations: an additive classification, a multiplicative…

Designed to measure specific dimensions of reading comprehension, the items for this test are based on a comprehension model which suggests that comprehension can be defined as six different skill areas: vocabulary, syntax, item recall, item sequence, interpretation, and evaluation. The test is divided into sections to correspond to each of the…

Designed to investigate the understanding of the linguistic form that connects a clause to another clause or another word, the test contains four sections. The students are instructed to read the first part of a sentence and then choose the answer which best completes that sentence. Each multiple choice item contains the correct answer and three…

Designed to measure the syntactic maturity of oral speech, the K-Ratio Index was devised for use in an investigation of the relationships between certain measures of syntactic maturity of oral languages and silent reading comprehension scores. Preparation for computing the ratio was accomplished by transcribing oral speech samples, excluding…

Designed to measure children's skill at recovering the deep structure relationships of sentences, the test contains twenty-five groups of three sentences and directs the children to circle the sentence which has a different meaning within each group. Means and standard deviations are listed by sex, and content validity is established for the test…

Designed to measure syntactic fluency or maturity in narrative writing, the Syntactic Maturity Test for Narrative Writing (SMTNW) is in two parts: (1) the test itself, a group of seventy-six kernel sentences making a coherent narrative, and (2) a means of syntactic analysis of the written samples that result when respondents rewrite the narrative,…

Designed to measure ability to choose rules of Standard English and Black English as they are appropriate to a situational context, the test consists of twenty items. It is an untimed group test, with reading assistance available if necessary from the examiner. Thirteen of the items present a situational context, requiring the subject to choose…

Designed to assess the quality of pieces of creative writing in the intermediate and junior high grades, the Sager Writing Scale (SWS) is intended for use by both students and teachers or by researchers. The SWS contains four scales with four ratings possible in the areas of vocabulary, elaboration, organization, and structure. Validity for the…

Designed to measure the ability of children to identify the meanings of structurally ambiguous or unambiguous sentences of English, the test consists of forty lead sentences: ten with surface structure ambiguity, ten with underlying structure ambiguity, and twenty which are unambiguous. For each of the lead sentences three interpretative sentences…

To evaluate the quality of written compositions, researchers at Educational Testing Service developed the Composition Evaluation Scales (CES), after factor-analytic studies of the reasons teachers gave for their judgments of compositions. This is a set of eight scales: ideas, organization, wording, flavor, usage, punctuation, spelling, and…

This test is designed to measure children's reading understanding of similes found in literature books suitable for grades four, five, and six. The simile is presented in context and is questioned in multiple choice format. The possible answer choices are based on the responses in a pilot study which could be divided into nine categories. An…

Designed to measure the effect of context on the ability of students to interpret structurally ambiguous sentences, this test consists of 20 items, ten of which are based on the surface structure ambiguities of the Sentence Interpretation Test (SIT). The criteria established for the construction of the Contextual Ambiguity Test (CAT) included item…