CALT Phonological Awareness Skills 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A student can blend onset and rime (e.g., /b/ + /at/ = 'bat') but struggles to blend individual phonemes (e.g., /b/ + /æ/ + /t/ = 'bat'). This pattern indicates the student is at which level of phonological awareness development?
- Full phonemic awareness
- Onset-rime awareness without complete phoneme segmentation (Correct answer)
- Syllable awareness only
- Phoneme deletion mastery
Correct answer: Onset-rime awareness without complete phoneme segmentation
Onset-rime blending is a less complex skill that precedes full phoneme-by-phoneme blending in the developmental hierarchy of phonological awareness.
Question 2: Which task best measures a student's ability to manipulate phonemes at the most advanced level of phonological awareness?
- Rhyme recognition
- Syllable counting
- Phoneme substitution (e.g., change /k/ in 'cat' to /h/) (Correct answer)
- Word-to-word matching
Correct answer: Phoneme substitution (e.g., change /k/ in 'cat' to /h/)
Phoneme substitution requires the student to delete an existing phoneme and insert a new one, representing the most complex level of phoneme manipulation.
Question 3: During a phoneme segmentation task, a student segments 'splash' as /sp/ /l/ /æ/ /ʃ/ instead of /s/ /p/ /l/ /æ/ /ʃ/. This error most likely reflects difficulty with:
- Vowel identification
- Consonant cluster (blend) segmentation (Correct answer)
- Syllable division
- Rime recognition
Correct answer: Consonant cluster (blend) segmentation
Treating a consonant cluster like /sp/ as a single unit rather than two separate phonemes indicates difficulty segmenting blends.
Question 4: A CALT is assessing phonological awareness in a student who speaks African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The student says 'tes' for 'test.' When scoring a final-consonant deletion task, the clinician should:
- Mark the response incorrect because the final phoneme was omitted
- Consider dialect features and not penalize for AAVE phonological patterns (Correct answer)
- Refer the student for a hearing evaluation immediately
- Score based on spelling rather than pronunciation
Correct answer: Consider dialect features and not penalize for AAVE phonological patterns
Final consonant cluster reduction is a systematic feature of AAVE, so culturally responsive assessment requires distinguishing dialect differences from phonological deficits.
Question 5: Which of the following describes the difference between phonological awareness and phonological processing?
- They are synonymous terms used interchangeably
- Phonological awareness is one component of the broader construct of phonological processing (Correct answer)
- Phonological processing is a subskill of phonological awareness
- Phonological processing refers only to reading, while phonological awareness refers only to speech
Correct answer: Phonological awareness is one component of the broader construct of phonological processing
Phonological processing is the broader construct that includes phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid automatized naming.
Question 6: A student is asked to say 'smile' without the /m/. The student responds 'sile.' This task is called:
- Phoneme blending
- Phoneme isolation
- Phoneme deletion (Correct answer)
- Phoneme segmentation
Correct answer: Phoneme deletion
Phoneme deletion requires the student to remove a specified phoneme from a word and produce the remaining sounds.
Question 7: Research consistently shows that the strongest predictor of early reading success among phonological awareness skills is:
- Rhyme production fluency
- Syllable blending speed
- Phoneme awareness, particularly phoneme segmentation and blending (Correct answer)
- Alliteration detection accuracy
Correct answer: Phoneme awareness, particularly phoneme segmentation and blending
Phoneme-level awareness, especially the ability to segment and blend individual phonemes, is the most robust phonological predictor of decoding and early reading achievement.
CALT Phonological Awareness Skills 4
A student can blend onset and rime (e.g., /b/ + /at/ = 'bat') but struggles to blend individual phonemes (e.g., /b/ + /æ/ + /t/ = 'bat').
This pattern indicates the student is at which level of phonological awareness development?