How We Test Reading: Common English Words Test

Our Common English Words reading test, tests the Fast Route reading system. We measure pronunciation speed and accuracy. Words are presented individually, in a sequence of four words. Your child is presented a maximum of five of such sequences, totalling 20 words.

We start with words that are most common, within the 30 to 60 rank on the list of most common English words, and progressively work our way up to words in the 1750 rank range. Such words are still considered very common English words. In this same progression, we also increase the length of the word progressively: from three-letter words up to seven letter words. This word length is not relevant in Fast Route reading, but allows us to combine them in an orderly fashion with the presentation of the Slow Route words or non-words.

An example of a good reader.

The graph on the RIGHT shows you an example of a good reader. We observe in the top half, that all five groups of four words (20 words total) have been able to be presented. Reading performance was more or less the same across the board. You see a calculated Common English Word Reading Performance Indicator (CEW RPI) score of 128%, meaning that this child demonstrated a performance at 128% of average seven to nine year old readers.

Further, you see between the brackets "AveT," which stands for Average Thinking Time. This is the average time in seconds that it took the child from "seeing the word" to "pronouncing the word." When this AveT goes over three seconds, fluency is low and reading comprehension starts to become difficult. The second value you see is "AveA," which stands for Average Accuracy. This child had an accuracy of 100%, meaning that all words were read correctly. When you see e.g. AveA = 0.65 this means that only 65% of the words were read correctly, and the rest were guessed.

Reading comprehension requires a sufficiently fast reading pace, as words and thoughts or concepts are stored in working memory. If sentence reading takes too long, the first part of the sentence, or the first opening of the thought or concept – retained in working memory - gets overwritten. If we add to that a relatively low word reading accuracy, then you will understand that reading comprehension becomes difficult – and sometimes even impossible.

An example of a weak reader.

The graph on the LEFT shows you an example of a weak reader. We notice that there are only three bars. This means that the performance in the last group of four words, the child averaged a thinking time per word in excess of 7.5 seconds. When a child reads this slow, comprehension is impossible (think of a sentence with only ten words, and taking a good minute to complete it...). We terminate the test in these cases in order to be respectful and gentle to the child.

We see a CEW RPI of only 31%, telling us that this child demonstrated a Fast Route reading performance of only 31% of average seven to nine year old children. The demonstrated Average Thinking Time was 5.27 seconds per word, which is very slow. The demonstrated Average Accuracy was only 0.58, meaning that 58% of the words were read correctly and 42% incorrectly or guessed.

Conclusions?

One can not automatically draw conclusions at this point. Dynaread interprets your child's assessment on the basis of three assumptions.

Dynaread assumes that the child has received adequate opportunity to learn to read. This is a relatively safe assumptions, as our minimum age is seven and our average sign up age is nine. These children should have received adequate instruction in learning to read.

Dynaread assumes that the child has been sufficiently motivated (which - again - is a safe assumption, as children want to measure up to their peers).

Dynaread assumes that the child has sufficient intelligence to be able to learn to read. Science has demonstrated that Dyslexia is independent of IQ. But this does not mean, of course, that a child of very low IQ may have difficulty in learning to read. Important: If you have reasons to believe that your child does not match one or more of these three assumptions, please do contact us.

Dynaread interprets your child's demonstrated Fast Route performance in direct correlation with your child's Slow Route performance. It is the combination of information, which allows us to identify typical patterns.