Measuring Linguistic Growth in Sentence-Level Writing Curriculum-Based Measures: Exploring Complementary Scoring Methods

What is it about?

We applied metrics from language sample analysis (LSA) to sentence-level picture word writing curriculum-based measures (PW CBM-W) to determine whether such scoring mechanisms have evidence of adequate reliability, criterion-related validity, and sensitivity to growth in grades 1-3.

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Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash

Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash

Why is it important?

PW CBM-W has evidence of technical quality as a broad measure of overall writing skills but cannot discretely measure language skills that are important for writing. By applying LSA metrics to PW CBM-W, discrete estimates of these important language skills are possible. Specifically, mean length of T-Unit in words and morphemes and number of different words showed promise a complementary metrics of syntax and lexical diversity/vocabulary, respectively. LSA is a recommended practice in comprehensive language evaluation but school-based SLPs often do not have time to conduct LSA in an evidence-based manner. Because PW CBM-W samples take only about 5-10 minutes to collect and score, they may offer promise for use with LSA.