Phonological Awareness skills:
The Test of Phonological Awareness, second edition (TOPA-2+) was administered to assess XXXXX’s
phonological awareness skills in English language. The test compromises of two subtests, Ending Sound
and Letter Sound. The first subtest has two tasks, to identify words with similar last sound of words and
to identify the word with different last sound out of four words. The first task Ending Sound-Same, the
student is asked to identifysame last sound in three words. XXXXX was presented with one word/picture,
e.g., “ball” and then he was presented with three words/pictures, e.g. “smile, horn, duck”. He was asked
to choose the word that has the same last sound as “ball”. XXXXX asked for repetitions a few times during
this task. It was observed that XXXXX was attentive, focused and tried his best to find the best answer.
He scored 9 out of 10 in this subtest.
In the second task Ending Sound-Different, the student is asked to identify different last sound in four
words. XXXXX was presented with “jeep, leg, rug, bag” and he was asked to identify the word with
different last sound. XXXXX scored 9 out of 10 in this subtest.
In the second subtest Letter Sound, XXXXX was asked to spell some unfamiliar names of monsters, with
the help of rhyming real words. For example, XXXXX was asked to spell “tay” which is a funny monster
name that rhymes with “may”. XXXXX struggled greatly in this subtest. He faced great difficulty in this
subtest and repeatedly asked for repetitions and help. He couldn’t differentiate the different vowels
presented in initial medial and final positions. He also couldn’t differentiate long and short vowels all
the time. Additionally XXXXX also couldn’t discriminate some consonant sounds as well. XXXXX scored
2 out of 18 in this subtest.
-Note: when writing the names down it has been noted that XXXXX flipped many of his letters
(mirrored).
The following table will summarize the results of TOPA-2+
** It is important to note that the TOPA-2+ is standardized and normed in the United States on native
English speakers. Therefore, the normative scores should be interpreted with caution. **
Name of subtest
Raw Score
Ending Sound-Same and
Different (phonological
Awareness)
18
Letter Sound
2
Percentile
Results
17
99%
Very Superior
5
4%
poor
Scaled score
In Summary, for the first subtest XXXXX scored in the 99% percentile, while on the second subtest he
scored in the 4% percentile. This indicates difficulties with making letter -sound correspondence in
addition to difficulties with grapheme/phoneme links as well as possible auditory discrimination issues.
It should be noted that XXXXX faced great difficulty differentiating vowel sounds in all positions (initial,
medial, and final) which could be an indicative to several things such as a possible hearing loss, in
addition to all the points mentioned above. These results showed that XXXXX has challenges in his
phonological awareness skills.
Other areas tested:
To get a clearer idea of XXXXX’s phonological awareness levels, extra testing was done in both Arabic and
English language. Below are some extra areas that were assessed: (in both Arabic and English)
-Rhyme recognition: The student is given two words and asked if they rhyme or don’t.
-XXXXX found this task easy and could consistently recognized rhyming words in both Arabic and
English language
-Rhyme production: The student is given one word and asked to give a word that rhymes with it.
-This task was very challenging for him; he was only able to score one point (cake/bake)
demonstrating that he understood the task but wasn’t able to do it in both Arabic and English language.
-Syllable awareness: The student was given multisyllabic words and asked to count out those syllables.
-XXXXX tested well in this subtest and was able to detect word with up to 4 syllables. His scores
reflect well across both languages.
-Initial/final sound identification: The student was asked to identify initial/final phoneme sound in words.
- XXXXX was able to identify the initial and final phonemes with high accuracy in English. In Arabic
he faced some difficulty with final sound (different) identification Ex. (‫سهم‬/‫)سهل‬. He tested well on initial
sound identification (same and different) Ex.(‫ورقة‬/‫يسمين و يرقة‬/‫ )يد‬and final sound identification (same)
Ex.(‫لطيف‬/‫)نظيف‬.
-Deletion task: The student is given a word then asked to delete a certain phoneme and say the word
back.
-XXXXX found this task somewhat challenging. This task has two sections. The first deletion task
used compounded words such as (Firetruck, remove fire what do we have left?) he was able to score all
the points in this section, while the second part required deletion from within the same word (example
such as: money, remove mo what are we left with?) he found this extremely difficult and was not able to
score any point in this section in both Arabic and English language.
-Sound blending/blending phonemes: The student is given a string of phonemes and is asked to blend
them appropriately.
-XXXXX’s scores on this subtest were not consistent, showing that his ability to blend is
inconsistent. The same could be seen across both languages. His difficulties increased with longer blends
(more than 2 phonemes).
-Segmenting phonemes: This tests the student’s ability to break words down into individual sounds.
Example: How many sounds do you hear In the word cat?
-XXXXX was only able to do words that had up to 2 phonemes. Words with 3 or more were very
challenging for him. The same difficulties were evident across both languages.
-Medial sound identification: The student is given a word and is then asked to identify the medial sound.
-XXXXX found this task extremely challenging in both Arabic and English. He was not able to
identify any of the medial sounds specifically when the sound was a vowel (English). He was also not able
to differentiate between long and short vowels.
Additional notes:
Letter sounds correlation was tested in both Arabic and English language. Of the 26 English letters
XXXXX was able to identify 17 letters with the correct corresponding letter name and letter sound. Of
the 28 Arabic letters though XXXXX identified 26 of them with correct letter name and letter sound
correspondence.
It should be noted that XXXXX displayed slow processing throughout the whole assessment. He also
needed constant reminders of our target sound example (Last sound not first).
His difficulties include making correct letter -sound correspondence in addition to difficulties with
grapheme/phoneme links as well as possible auditory discrimination issues. XXXXX faced great difficulty
differentiating vowel sounds in all positions (initial, medial, and final).
In conclusion XXXXX’s scores reflect difficulties with phonological awareness across both languages,
Although his phonological awareness skills are more superior in Arabic when compared to English.