| Scenario | Child says |
|---|---|
| Letter "a" | /a/ as in "hat" or "hate" |
| Letter "e" | /e/ as in "get" or "he" |
| Letter "i" | /i/ as in "bit" or "bite" |
| Letter "o" | /o/ as in "got" or "go" |
| Letter "u" | /u/ as in "hug", "rule" or "mule" |
| Letter "c" | /k/ as in "cat" or /s/ as in "nice" |
| Letter "g" | /g/ as in "goat" or /j/ as in "page" |
| Letter "y" | /e/ as in "yellow" or "happy" or /ai/ as in "cry" or /i/ as in "gym" |
14 Letter Sound Fluency
14.1 Task Description
Children are shown a page of assorted lowercase and uppercase letters, arranged in five rows of ten. They are asked to say the sounds of as many letters as they can within 45 seconds.
14.2 Construct
The Letter Sound Fluency task measures children’s fluency in saying the sounds of the alphabet.
14.3 Item Development
14.3.1 English
All the letters of the English alphabet were used. For letters representing more than one phoneme, all corresponding phonemes were accepted as correct, see Table 14.1. It was common for children to add “uh” to the end of consonant sounds, and that was scored as correct.
14.3.2 Spanish
All the phonemes of the Spanish alphabet were used, including the phonemes that are not present in the English language (e.g., /ñ/) and phonemes that are represented with more than one letter (e.g., /ch/and /ll/). The only exceptions were the letter “h”, as it does not have a sound in Spanish, and letters “q” and “x”, as they cannot be represented as single phonemes. For letters representing more than one phoneme, all corresponding phonemes were accepted as correct, see Table 14.2.
| Scoring Events | Child says |
|---|---|
| Letter "c" | /k/ as in "casa" or /s/ as in "cebolla" |
| Letter "g" | soft /g/ as in "gato" or hard /x/ as in "gente" |
| Letter "r" | trilled sound as in "ratón" or soft sound as in "cara" |
| Letter "y" | /i/ as in "rey" or /ll/ as in "yema" |
14.4 Scoring
Participating children were presented with a 5x10 grid containing 50 letters and were asked to produce the sounds of the letters as fast as they could within 45 seconds. The final score was calculated as the number of correct responses.
14.5 Samples
| Characteristic |
English
|
Spanish
|
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| K N = 212 |
G1 N = 3,215 |
G2 N = 564 |
K N = 9 |
G1 N = 1,283 |
G2 N = 240 |
|
| Timepoint | ||||||
| Fall 2023 | 0 (0%) | 396 (14%) | 346 (62%) | 0 (NA%) | 381 (37%) | 71 (30%) |
| Fall 2024 | 70 (100%) | 2,426 (86%) | 216 (38%) | 0 (NA%) | 640 (63%) | 168 (70%) |
| Unknown | 142 | 393 | 2 | 9 | 262 | 1 |
| Administration Format | ||||||
| Not applicable | 212 (100%) | 3,215 (100%) | 564 (100%) | 9 (100%) | 1,283 (100%) | 240 (100%) |
| Race | ||||||
| American/Alaskan Native | 11 (5.7%) | 111 (3.8%) | 3 (0.6%) | 0 (0%) | 47 (3.7%) | 4 (1.7%) |
| Asian | 12 (6.3%) | 232 (8.0%) | 52 (9.8%) | 1 (11%) | 39 (3.1%) | 4 (1.7%) |
| Black/African American | 9 (4.7%) | 285 (9.8%) | 65 (12%) | 1 (11%) | 20 (1.6%) | 1 (0.4%) |
| Not reported | 34 (18%) | 362 (12%) | 98 (18%) | 0 (0%) | 513 (41%) | 116 (49%) |
| Other | 71 (37%) | 460 (16%) | 64 (12%) | 0 (0%) | 132 (10%) | 12 (5.0%) |
| White | 55 (29%) | 1,468 (50%) | 249 (47%) | 7 (78%) | 510 (40%) | 102 (43%) |
| Unknown | 20 | 297 | 33 | 0 | 22 | 1 |
| Ethnicity | ||||||
| Hispanic/Latin(o/a) | 117 (82%) | 2,017 (69%) | 261 (50%) | 8 (89%) | 1,182 (95%) | 226 (95%) |
| Intentional nonreport | 0 (0%) | 14 (0.5%) | 2 (0.4%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (0.2%) | 0 (0%) |
| Not Hispanic/Latin(o/a) | 26 (18%) | 897 (31%) | 258 (50%) | 1 (11%) | 63 (5.1%) | 12 (5.0%) |
| Unknown | 69 | 287 | 43 | 0 | 36 | 2 |
| Gender | ||||||
| Female | 100 (47%) | 1,459 (50%) | 236 (45%) | 5 (56%) | 648 (53%) | 122 (51%) |
| Male | 112 (53%) | 1,450 (50%) | 294 (55%) | 4 (44%) | 572 (47%) | 116 (49%) |
| Unknown | 0 | 306 | 34 | 0 | 63 | 2 |
| Home Language | ||||||
| English | 87 (68%) | 1,686 (64%) | 431 (82%) | 0 (0%) | 150 (12%) | 8 (3.3%) |
| Spanish | 37 (29%) | 886 (33%) | 55 (10%) | 9 (100%) | 1,103 (88%) | 231 (97%) |
| Other | 4 (3.1%) | 79 (3.0%) | 38 (7.3%) | 0 (0%) | 4 (0.3%) | 0 (0%) |
| Unknown | 84 | 564 | 40 | 0 | 26 | 1 |
| English Proficiency Label | ||||||
| (Re-)Classified Proficient | 0 (0%) | 141 (5.6%) | 27 (5.1%) | 1 (11%) | 147 (12%) | 48 (21%) |
| English Learner | 35 (59%) | 799 (32%) | 65 (12%) | 8 (89%) | 933 (77%) | 171 (74%) |
| English-only | 24 (41%) | 1,582 (63%) | 434 (83%) | 0 (0%) | 129 (11%) | 12 (5.2%) |
| Unknown | 153 | 693 | 38 | 0 | 74 | 9 |
| Ever IEP/504 | 15 (26%) | 205 (9.2%) | 48 (12%) | 1 (11%) | 106 (9.8%) | 11 (6.0%) |
| Unknown | 154 | 994 | 172 | 0 | 201 | 58 |
14.6 Score distribution
14.7 Criterion Validity Evidence
14.7.1 Sample
| Characteristic |
English
|
Spanish
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K N = 70 |
G1 N = 129 |
G2 N = 1 |
G1 N = 140 |
|
| Timepoint | ||||
| Spring 2024 | 0 (0%) | 59 (46%) | 1 (100%) | 140 (100%) |
| Spring 2025 | 70 (100%) | 70 (54%) | 0 (0%) | |
| Race | ||||
| American/Alaskan Native | 4 (6.3%) | 3 (2.4%) | 0 (0%) | 4 (2.9%) |
| Asian | 4 (6.3%) | 13 (10%) | 0 (0%) | 6 (4.3%) |
| Black/African American | 3 (4.7%) | 13 (10%) | 0 (0%) | 4 (2.9%) |
| Not reported | 13 (20%) | 18 (15%) | 0 (0%) | 36 (26%) |
| Other | 22 (34%) | 28 (23%) | 0 (0%) | 7 (5.1%) |
| White | 18 (28%) | 49 (40%) | 1 (100%) | 81 (59%) |
| Unknown | 6 | 5 | 0 | 2 |
| Ethnicity | ||||
| Hispanic/Latin(o/a) | 41 (84%) | 49 (39%) | 0 (0%) | 124 (89%) |
| Intentional nonreport | 0 (0%) | 1 (0.8%) | 0 (0%) | |
| Not Hispanic/Latin(o/a) | 8 (16%) | 75 (60%) | 1 (100%) | 16 (11%) |
| Unknown | 21 | 4 | 0 | |
| Gender | ||||
| Female | 31 (44%) | 59 (46%) | 0 (0%) | 69 (49%) |
| Male | 39 (56%) | 70 (54%) | 1 (100%) | 71 (51%) |
| Home Language | ||||
| English | 27 (64%) | 80 (73%) | 1 (100%) | 32 (23%) |
| Spanish | 14 (33%) | 14 (13%) | 0 (0%) | 104 (75%) |
| Other | 1 (2.4%) | 15 (14%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (1.4%) |
| Unknown | 28 | 20 | 0 | 2 |
| English Proficiency Label | ||||
| (Re-)Classified Proficient | 0 (0%) | 8 (9.9%) | 0 (0%) | 17 (12%) |
| English Learner | 13 (62%) | 20 (25%) | 0 (0%) | 90 (65%) |
| English-only | 8 (38%) | 53 (65%) | 1 (100%) | 31 (22%) |
| Unknown | 49 | 48 | 0 | 2 |
| Ever IEP/504 | 6 (29%) | 4 (5.6%) | 0 (NA%) | 13 (11%) |
| Unknown | 49 | 58 | 1 | 23 |
English Letter Sound Fluency was correlated with the Letter-Word Identification subtest from the Woodcock-Johnson IV (WJ IV ACH) test (Schrank, McGrew, and Mather 2014). Letter Sound Fluency Spanish was correlated with the Identificación de Letras y Palabras subtest from the Batería IV Woodcock-Muñoz (Batería IV APROV) test (Woodcock et al. 2019). The Letter-Word Identification and Identificación de Letras y Palabras subtests require the reading of words, moving beyond letter-sound fluency. Given that the tasks do not completely align, the lower correlations are not surprising.
| Grade | n | r [CI] | n | r [CI] | n | r [CI] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| K | 70 | 0.62 [0.45, 0.74] | NA | NA | 140 | 0.52 [0.39, 0.63] |
| G1 | 129 | 0.20 [0.03, 0.36] | 20 | 0.09 [-0.37, 0.51] | 140 | 0.52 [0.39, 0.63] |