The speech teacher recently gave my son a reading assessment. She asked him a series of questions regarding the story as they read ( I was observing that day) My son has autism and his expressive language is very poor. When we work with him at home, we give him written q&a format. He always does much better this way than when we test him orally. We have also taken him to a psych in the past for reading assessments and they were all written
So my question is - should I ask for a different kind of assessment? Do you think it would be beneficial to take him to someone on my own for help? I’m not sure I understand how that assessment tests his ability to comprehend written text as much as it does play to his deficit in language processing and expression.
thanks
chantelle
Are you saying that his written expression is better than his oral expression? That would be a good thing to know - so both the oral questions as well as a “read the passage and answer these questions” in written format would be a good idea. Quite possibly that’s what is happening since the written question tests are fairly common (and lots easier to administer since they can be done in groups).
The oral assessment is a good thing to have to compare to the earlier tests. It’s important for his weaknesses to be accurately assessed so that a teacher knows that written q & a works better (most kids do better orally). Yes, it plays to his deficits — and can give valuable information about them.