Purpose Of The Woodcock-Muinoz Language Survey

Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey

The purpose of the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey (WMLS) is to establish language proficiency levels for individuals starting at 2 years of age. It provides a norm-referenced measure of reading, writing, listening, and comprehension. This assessment has different applications. It can be used to provide annual assessment of English language proficiency in the four domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The listening and reading measures can be used to report student progress in English language comprehension as per title III. It may serve as a predictor of students’ actual academic adjustment. Additionally, it is used to meet the requirement of ruling out difficulties

The listening subtest assesses the students’ ability to follow common, explicit oral directions and participate in diverse academic or social tasks. The speaking subtests assesses the students ability to provide information, express opinions and preferences, make requests, ask questions, request clarification and negotiate for understanding, identify an object and describe its purpose or use, use words or phrases, identify an academic or social situation and describe it using sentences, describe processes, compare and explain preferences, and interpret, narrate and paraphrase events using visual information. The reading subtest assesses the ability for students to identify rhyming words, apply letter-sound relationships to read English words and phonemes, apply knowledge of morphemes and syntax to word meaning, classify words, demonstrate vocabulary and reading comprehension, identify important literary features of text, and read critically and apply learning strategies to interpretation. The writing subtest assesses the students ability to use singular and plural, subject/verb agreement, tense agreement, conjunctions, pronouns, prepositional phrases, and auxiliary verbs, capitalize beginning of sentences and proper names, use sentence-ending marks, commas, apostrophes, differentiate complete sentences from fragments, use articles, form statements and questions, differentiate complete

The test formats include multiple-choice and performance-based questions to address a wide range of language skills. Theme-based tests cover subjects such as mathematics, science and technology, reading/language arts, and social studies to better evaluate student understanding of both academic and social language. Each of the domains can be administered individually for monitoring specific areas, or can be administered as a whole to provide a complete picture of students’ language abilities. The listening, reading and writing subsets can be group administered. The speaking subset is administered individually. These tests are also available in Braille and Large-Print