Assessing language awareness : translating and adapting a Norwegian screening test for pre-readers and beginning readers in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT Timely detection and prevention of reading difficulties has been a significant point of interest for researchers for a long time. The insufficient body of research within this field in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the main spiritus movens behind the study and the assessment tool here present. The purpose of this study has been to adjust and adapt the existing Ringerike Material by Lyster and Tingleff (1992), the screening material, or the test that is tackling abilities and skills of pre-readers and beginning readers, deemed necessary for a successful adoption of elementary literacy to language, social and cultural features existing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including different aspects of language awareness, short-term auditory memory for sequences, etc. The thesis also describes in details the process of test adjusting, including the results of the pilot study conducted with a group of pre-schoolers attending the so called preparatory class or grade, gathered for the purposes of assessing the process of adaptation and further future revision and adaptation of the material itself. The test was initially translated and, as such, the raw material was analyzed in comparison with the language features of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language(s) and changed accordingly. The first edition of the test was revised by two experts in the domain of language development and language teaching, and afterwards further adjusted according to their suggestions. Interviews were conducted with the two first grade elementary school teachers, in order to get their professional opinion and suggestions on content and form of the whole test battery, individual subtests and individual test items from the first hand and on the appropriateness of the form and content of the adjusted material for children of the age group it was applied with in their social and cultural context. Teacher s activities were observed in order to state the existence of any form of language awareness training. Vocabulary training was conducted in order to prevent the differences in vocabulary from influencing and thus biasing the test results. Test was used (conducted) with the sample purposefully selected and the results were processed statistically and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, as well as compared with some basic background information on children. In addition, the test was also conducted with one child with mild mental retardation. The results from this pilot study suggest the necessity for further adjusting of the test before it is fully ready for formal application. This relates especially to the fact that the few of the subtests have shown rather low reliability. This could be enhanced by additional items and testing with a larger group of children, the fact that some subtests have shown significant mutual correlations indicating that they may be tapping the same or similar abilities, implying that they could be merged into single subtests. High results in those batteries (phonological tasks) for which the existence of different forms of language training were noted demonstrate how important the growth and improvement of language awareness is for the successful adoption of reading and writing skills