The Yopp-Singer Test of Phoneme Segmentation measures a child’s ability to separately articulate the sounds of a spoken word in order. For example, sat, should be sounded with three sounds: /s/-/a/-/t/, whereas for fish, we hear only three sounds: /f/-/i/-/sh/. Words were selected for inclusion on the 22 item test on the basis of feature analysis and word familiarity. The test is administered individually and requires about 5 to 10 minutes per child.

Student’s Name:_______________________________ Date:_______________

Score (number correct) ______________

Directions: "Today we’re going to play a word game. I’m going to say a word and I want you to break the word apart. You are going to tell me each sound in the word in order. For example, if I say "old," you should say /o/-/l/-/d/." (Administrator: Be sure to say the sounds, not the letters, in the word.) Let’s try a few together.

Practice items: (Assist the child in segmenting these items as necessary.)

ride, go, man

Test items: (Circle those items that the student correctly segments; incorrect responses may be recorded on the blank line following the item.)

1. dog __________________________      12. lay ___________________________

2. keep _________________________      13. race __________________________

3. fine__________________________      14. zoo ___________________________

4. no ___________________________     15. three __________________________

5. she __________________________      16. job____________________________

6. wave _________________________     17. in _____________________________

7. grew _________________________     18. ice ____________________________

8. that __________________________   19. at _____________________________

9. red __________________________     20. top ____________________________

10. me __________________________     21. by ____________________________

Feedback is given to the child as he or she progresses through the list. If the child responds correctly, the examiner nods, or says, "That’s right." If the child gives an incorrect response, he or she is corrected. The examiner provides the appropriate response.

A child’s score is the number of items correctly segmented into all constituent phonemes. No partial credit is given. For the response /c/-/at/ instead of /c/-/a/-/t/, the response may be noted on the blank line following the item but is considered incorrect for purposes of scoring. Correct responses are only those that involve articulation of each phoneme in the target word. Blends, like bl should have two sounds /b/-/l/, whereas diagraphs, like sh and th only have one sound each.

Teachers of young children should expect a wide range of performance on this test. Students who obtain high scores may be considered phonemically aware. Students who correctly segment some items are displaying emerging phonemic awareness. Students who are able to segment only a few items or none at all lack appropriate levels of phonemic awareness. Without intervention, those students scoring very low on the test are likely to experience difficulty with reading and spelling.

Data is provided in the article that indicates the Yopp-Singer Test is a valid measure of phonemic awareness, and has significant predictive validity.

The information obtained from this assessment tool can be used to identify children quite early who are likely to experience difficulty in reading and spelling and give them appropriate instructional support.

Children will likely make little sense of the alphabetic principle without phonemic awareness, and so phonemic awareness should be developed as part of the larger literacy program for many children.

"A growing number of teachers hold an emergent literacy perspective, viewing literacy as an evolving process that begins during infancy and they provide a wealth of valuable literacy experiences for children very early on." Hallie Kay Yopp