CTEL CTEL English Literacy Development 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Morphological awareness instruction benefits English learners most directly by helping them:
- Improve listening comprehension scores
- Derive word meanings from prefixes, roots, and suffixes (Correct answer)
- Increase oral reading rate
- Develop phonemic segmentation skills
Correct answer: Derive word meanings from prefixes, roots, and suffixes
Morphological awareness allows students to analyze word parts (e.g., un- + predict + -able) to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words.
Question 2: Which of the following best describes the 'language experience approach' (LEA) in literacy instruction for ELs?
- Students read commercially published decodable books
- Students dictate personal stories that become their reading material (Correct answer)
- Students read only digital texts on tablets
- Students memorize sight words from flash cards
Correct answer: Students dictate personal stories that become their reading material
In LEA, students dictate stories from their own experiences; the teacher transcribes them, and those texts become reading material, connecting oral and written language.
Question 3: A teacher uses a 'think-aloud' strategy while reading a complex informational text to English learners. The PRIMARY literacy goal of this strategy is to:
- Assess students' reading fluency
- Model metacognitive comprehension strategies explicitly (Correct answer)
- Build phonemic awareness skills
- Introduce new grammatical structures
Correct answer: Model metacognitive comprehension strategies explicitly
Think-alouds make invisible comprehension processes visible, explicitly modeling how proficient readers monitor and repair understanding.
Question 4: Which text structure signal word would help an EL student identify a cause-and-effect relationship in informational text?
- However
- For example
- Consequently (Correct answer)
- In contrast
Correct answer: Consequently
'Consequently' signals that what follows is a result or effect of something previously stated, marking a cause-and-effect text structure.
Question 5: According to research on English learner literacy, which factor most strongly predicts long-term reading achievement in English?
- The age at which students begin formal English instruction
- Strong oral language proficiency in English (Correct answer)
- Access to a bilingual dictionary
- The number of decodable books read per week
Correct answer: Strong oral language proficiency in English
Research consistently shows that oral language proficiency—vocabulary, syntax, and discourse—is the strongest predictor of long-term reading comprehension for ELs.
Question 6: A teacher assesses a student's reading using a running record and finds 85% accuracy. This level is best described as:
- Independent reading level
- Instructional reading level
- Frustration reading level (Correct answer)
- Advanced reading level
Correct answer: Frustration reading level
Below 90% accuracy on a running record indicates the text is at the frustration level, meaning it is too difficult for independent or instructional use.
Question 7: Which practice best supports English learners in developing reading fluency?
- Silent independent reading of above-grade texts
- Repeated reading of familiar texts with corrective feedback (Correct answer)
- Reading a new text only once each day
- Avoiding any re-reading to prevent boredom
Correct answer: Repeated reading of familiar texts with corrective feedback
Repeated reading of familiar, accessible texts with teacher feedback builds automaticity, phrasing, and prosody—the components of reading fluency.
CTEL CTEL English Literacy Development 3
Morphological awareness instruction benefits English learners most directly by helping them: