DIAGNOSTIC TEST OF WORD READING PROCESSES

DIAGNOSTIC 

TEST OF 

WORD 

READING 

PROCESSES 

Evaluation Teacher’s Guide Pack 

Forum for Research in Literacy and Language, Institute of Education

Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes 

Welcome to the Diagnostic Test of 

Word Reading Processes 

DIAGNOSTIC 

TEST OF 

WORD 

READING 

PROCESSES 

Teacher’s Guide 

Forum for Research in Literacy and Language, Institute of Education 

Contents 

Introduction to the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes 03 

Example reading cards 04 

An essential tutorial 06 

Examples 13 

Order form 16 

2

Evaluation Pack 

Introduction to the 

Diagnostic Test of Word Reading 

Processes 

The Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes is a test of word and non-word reading for children 

aged 6 to 12. 

The test comprises 90 items divided as follows: 

• 30 exception words which provide a measure of lexical-semantic processes; 

• 30 non-words which provide a measure of phonological recoding processes; 

• 30 regular words which can be read by either process. 

It is the first test to: 

• match words in the regular word and non-word sets by compiling non-words from segments of 

regular words; 

• match the regular and exception word sets according to their frequency of occurrence in books 

read by school children in the UK; 

• provide normative data obtained from a large and representative sample of children from 

Reception/P1 to Y7/S1 in schools in England. 

Quick and easy to administer, score and interpret, the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes 

makes available to teachers a diagnostic tool that has long been used in research studies, and that 

enables precise specification of the areas of difficulty experienced by individual children in developing 

fluent and automatic word reading. 

Developed by the Forum for Research in Literacy and Language and used as a research tool over 

several years, the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes standardisation was carried out in 

2009 and 2011 and the test yields an overall standard age score, age equivalent scores and an 

individual stanine score for each of its three component parts. 

3


Sample non-words 

Example 

reading 

cards 

Practice items 

vip tek 

yol hap cug vus rit 

kem jid wex bof naz 

Please note: These are not actual words from the test, but are close approximations to the test content. 

NW1 

4


NW2 

Sample non-words II 

froll mong merfar hister nostchen 

hunril pringy kitcess bungentine turpalow 

Sample exception words 

do bear what people wolf 

eye country wealth rheumatism beautiful 

Sample regular words 

frog hill monster farmer kitchen 

nostril hungry princess bungalow turpentine 

Please note: These are not actual words from the test, but are close approximations to the test content. 

5


An essential tutorial 

Introduction to the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes 

What is involved in learning to read? 

There are two essential dimensions to learning to read: children must learn to recognise 

and understand written words, and they must learn to recover and interpret the literal and 

inferential meanings of texts. These two dimensions are encapsulated in the Simple View 

of Reading (Hoover and Gough, 1990). 3 

Figure 1.1: The Simple View of Reading 

Language 

Comprehension 

Processes 

Good 

Word 

Word 

Recognition 

Poor 

Good 

Recognition 

Processes 

Processes 

Poor 

Language 

Comprehension 

Processes 

Each dimension within this simple framework is far from ‘simple’, and involves the 

development and use of complex cognitive processes – processes operating within the 

mind and brain. 

6 

3 

Useful sources of information about the Simple View of Reading include: Adlof et al. (2006); Hoover and Gough (1990); Kendeou et al. 

(2009); Kirby and Savage (2008); Stuart et al. (2008).


What does the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes assess? 

The test focuses on the cognitive processes that underlie the recognition and 

understanding of written words: the ‘word recognition’ dimension of the Simple View 

of Reading. 

It does this by assessing pupils’ performance on three types of word: 

• Regular words, for example ‘meet’, ‘shampoo’, ‘catapult’, which conform to the 

grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules of the language 

• Exception words, for example, ‘was’, ‘yacht’, ‘meringue’, which do not conform to 

these GPC rules 

• Non-words, for example ‘brafe’, ‘meckton’, ‘shelibowt’, which are pronounceable 

sequences of letters that do not exist as real words in the language. 

What are these word reading processes? 

Over the past 50 years, there has been a huge amount of research devoted to 

understanding how people are able to recognise the individual sequences of letters that 

constitute each written word, and thereby gain access to the meaning and pronunciation 

of each word. Some areas of difference in detail remain between different theories. 

However, there is now a large measure of agreement that skilled readers have developed 

two interacting sets of processes that operate together on each written word. Therefore, 

pupils learning to read need to develop both sets of processes if they are to become 

skilled readers. 

In order to remain impartial with respect to the remaining differences between competing 

theories, the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes uses the neutral terms ‘lexicalsemantic” 

and ‘phonological’ to describe these two sets of interacting processes. To make 

best use of the test, you need to understand what each set of processes involves. A brief 

account is provided below. 

What are lexical-semantic processes? 

Lexical-semantic processes depend upon accessing previously stored knowledge about 

words. 

Long before they start to learn to read, children have already stored the meanings and 

pronunciations of thousands of words that they use in their daily lives. Where a word is 

already stored in a pupil’s oral vocabulary, developing lexical-semantic processes involves: 

• storing knowledge of the letter sequence of the written form of the word 

• linking the letter sequence to its meaning. 

Word meanings already stored in oral vocabulary are already linked to their pronunciation. 

This means that accessing the meaning of the word automatically triggers access to its 

pronunciation. 

7


However, reading soon becomes a major source of oral vocabulary development, and so 

pupils start to come across written words whose meanings and pronunciations are not 

already in their oral vocabulary. In these cases, developing lexical-semantic processes 

involves: 

• storing knowledge of the letter sequence of the written word 

• inferring something of the word’s meaning from the context in which it occurs 

• working out a pronunciation for the word from its letter sequence 

• linking the letter sequence to the word’s meaning and pronunciation. 

And, of course, unfamiliar words encountered in print may well be mispronounced: for 

example, ‘misled’ may become ‘mizzled’, and give rise to a new verb ‘to mizzle’ (as 

evidenced in the speech error ‘don’t mizzle me’). 

Once the letter sequence of a previously unknown written word has been stored and 

linked to its meaning and pronunciation, on subsequent encounters that written word 

will be recognised immediately on sight. Instant recognition leads to automatic and 

effortless recovery of the stored meaning and pronunciation. Lexical-semantic processing 

is extraordinarily fast and operates without any conscious awareness on the part of the 

skilled reader. 

Lexical-semantic processes are involved in reading all words, both regular and exception. 4 

However, they are uniquely tapped by Exception Word Reading, as Exception Word 

Reading is only achieved through lexical-semantic processing. Therefore, Exception Word 

Reading is used in this test as the measure of lexical-semantic processes. 

Importantly, the sequence of operations in lexical-semantic processing is from stored letter 

sequence to word meaning to word pronunciation. Thus, these processes allow us to 

distinguish between homophones like ‘sail’ and ‘sale’, even when we read them without 

any disambiguating context. The letter sequence ‘sail’ is linked to the meaning ‘an area of 

fabric used to catch the wind and propel a boat over water’, whereas the letter sequence 

‘sale’ is linked to the meaning ‘the exchange of goods, property or services for an agreed 

sum of money or credit’. 

8 

4 

The only requirement is that words should be familiar to the reader. That is, they must have been previously encountered in print 

sufficiently often for their letter sequences, meanings and pronunciations to have been stored. In skilled readers, one or two encounters 

with a written word are sufficient. For beginner readers, many more encounters are needed: some young beginner readers fail to 

recognise and understand written words that they have seen very many times previously (see, for example, Stuart et al., 2000).


Figure 1.2: Sequence of operations in lexical-semantic processing 

Written 

word 

SAIL 

Access stored 

letter sequence 

Access stored 

word meaning 

S-A-I-L 

‘an area of fabric 

used to catch the 

wind and propel 

a boat over 

water’ 

Access stored 

word 

pronunciation 

/seɪl/ 

S-A-L-E 

‘the exchange of 

goods, property 

or services for an 

agreed sum of 

money or credit’ 

Access stored 

word 

pronunciation 

SALE 

Written 

word 

Access stored 

letter sequence 

Access stored 

word meaning 

What are phonological processes in reading? 

Phonological processes depend on the use of previously stored knowledge about 

correspondences between printed letters and letter groups (graphemes) and speech 

sounds (phonemes): that is, stored knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondence 

(GPC) rules. They are involved in reading regular words, whether or not these have been 

previously seen and stored, and non-words. Using phonological processes to read 

exception words would lead to a mispronunciation, for example reading ‘yacht’ to rhyme 

with ‘matched’. Phonological processes are uniquely tapped by Non-word Reading, 

because non-words do not exist as words in the language. They have not been seen 

before, and so their letter sequence cannot have been stored. They can only be read 

accurately by phonological processing. Therefore, Non-word Reading is used in the 

Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes as the measure of phonological processing. 

Development of phonological processes for word reading involves: 

• developing an understanding of the alphabetic principle, that phonemes in spoken 

words are represented by graphemes in written words 

• developing explicit awareness of the sequence of phonemes that constitute each 

spoken word 

• learning the correspondences between graphemes and phonemes 

9


• learning to recognise graphemes in written words 

• learning to blend phonemes into whole-word pronunciations. 

Importantly, the sequence of operations in phonological processing is from letter 

sequences to grapheme-phoneme translation and phoneme blending, to word 

pronunciation and thence to word meaning. 

Figure 1.3: Sequence of operations in phonological processing 

Written 

word 

Identify 

graphemes 

SHAMPOO 

sh-a-m-p-oo 

Translate 

graphemes to 

phonemes 

sh ➔ /ʃ/ 

a ➔ /a/ 

m ➔ /m/ 

p ➔ /p/ 

oo ➔ /u/ 

/ʃ-a-m-p-u/ 

/ʃampu/ 

Blend phonemes 

Access stored 

word 

pronunciation 

/ʃampu/ 

Access stored 

word meaning 

‘soap to wash 

the hair’ 

Developing and learning the necessary components for phonological processes to 

operate fluently can be a difficult task for some pupils. But phonological processes offer 

rich rewards for the reader. Learning a relatively small 5 set of GPC rules allows the pupil 

to work out pronunciations for the increasing numbers of unfamiliar written words they 

encounter. The meanings of many of these words may already be stored in the pupil’s oral 

vocabulary. Thus, working out the pronunciation allows the pupil to access the meaning 

of the word. As with lexical-semantic processes, something of the word’s meaning can be 

inferred from the context in which it is encountered, and stored for future use. 

In skilled readers, phonological processes operate automatically and fluently, without the 

conscious awareness of the reader. 

10 

5 

See, for example, Vousden et al., 2010.


How does the test assess lexical-semantic processes? 

The test contains sets of matched regular words and exception words. Pupils whose 

reading relies on the use of lexical-semantic processes will read regular and exception 

words to a broadly equivalent level, because both can be accurately pronounced by 

lexical-semantic processing. Pupils who also have well-developed phonological processes 

will tend to show an advantage for regular over exception words. This is because regular 

words can be pronounced accurately by both sets of processes, and so do not need to 

be already known and stored by the reader. 

As explained above, Exception Word Reading is the purest measure of lexical-semantic 

processes. Therefore, in the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes, stanine scores 6 

for Exception Word Reading are used as the measure of lexical-semantic processes. 

How does the test assess phonological processes? 

The test also contains a set of non-words: letter sequences that could be words in the 

language, but that do not link to any meaning. The non-words in this test have been 

made by recombining letter sequences from the words in the regular word set: thus, all 

their component letter sequences are as familiar or unfamiliar to the pupil as the letter 

sequences in the regular words. Pupils whose reading relies predominantly on the use of 

phonological processes will read regular words and non-words to a broadly equivalent 

level, because both can be pronounced accurately by phonological processing. Their 

reading of exception words, which can only be pronounced accurately by lexical-semantic 

processes, will be relatively poorer. 

As explained above, Non-word Reading is the purest measure of phonological processes. 

Therefore, in the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes, stanine scores for Non-word 

Reading are used as the measure of phonological processes. 

Why should I use the test? 

The Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes is the only standardised test with British 

English norms currently available that allows you to uncover the nature of the difficulties 

an individual pupil is experiencing in developing fluent automatic word reading processes. 

The pupil profile provided by administering this test can usefully inform your ability to 

provide teaching that is appropriate to the needs of the individual pupil, and that will help 

the pupil to overcome his or her difficulties. 

6 

See page 22 of the Teacher’s Guide for a definition of stanine scores. 

11


When should I use the test? 

You can use the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes to assess the word reading 

skills of all the pupils in your class, or you might prefer to use it selectively with pupils 

whose reading development is causing you concern. 

The Exception Word Reading/Non-word Reading comparisons reveal three different kinds 

of profile of reading difficulties: 

• a Lexical-Semantic profile, indicating relative difficulty in developing lexical-semantic 

processes 

• a Phonological profile, indicating a relative difficulty in developing phonological 

processes 

• a Mixed profile, indicating difficulty in developing both sets of processes. 

Procedures for obtaining and interpreting these profiles are described in Chapter 4. 

Suggestions for what to do once you have obtained and interpreted a profile for an 

individual pupil are given in Chapter 6. 

It is important to remember that the Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes is 

focused on the word reading dimension of the Simple View of Reading. It cannot 

(and is not intended to) identify pupils who are experiencing difficulties with reading 

comprehension, except in so far as those difficulties may be caused by poor or inefficient 

word reading skills. Pupils with age appropriate word reading skills who struggle to 

understand written texts appropriate to their age and interests should be given a prose 

reading test such as the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC, Snowling 

et al., 2009). 

12


Examples using words supplied in the 


Example 1 

Exception Regular Non-word 

do 

√ 

frog 

√ 

froll 

√ 

bear 

√ 

hill 

√ 

mong 

√ 

what 

√ 

monster x merfar x 

people 

√ 

farmer 

√ 

hister x 

wolf x kitchen 

√ 

nostchen x 

eye 

√ 

nostril x hunril x 

country x hungry 

√ 

pringry x 

wealth x princess x kitcess x 

rheumatism x bungalow x bungentine x 

beautiful x turpentine x turpalow x 

Exception word 

Regular word 

Non-word 

= 5 correct 

= 5 correct 

= 2 correct 

From these raw scores it looks as though this child reads exception words and regular words equally 

well, and that he/she reads words better than non-words. However, raw scores are misleading and 

you cannot draw any conclusions from them. You need to convert raw scores to stanine scores using 

the normative data tables. 

Using stanine scores, the test is designed to reveal three patterns (‘profiles’) of word reading. This can 

be done by simply comparing the child’s stanine score for exception words with their stanine score for 

non-words. 

Let’s imagine that the child in the example above achieved a stanine score of 3 for exception word 

reading, and 1 for non-word reading. 

As you can see, these stanine scores give the child a 

phonological profile. The child relies mostly in reading on 

lexical-semantic processes, which can read all words, regular 

as well as exception, as long as they are already familiar 

to the child. Unfamiliar words cannot be decoded using 

phonological recoding processes. Intervention for this child 

should concentrate on developing his/her phonological 

recoding processes. 

13


Example 2 


do 

√ 

frog 

√ 

froll 

√ 

bear 

x 

hill 

√ 

mong 

√ 

what 

√ 

monster 

√ 

merfar 

√ 

people 

√ 

farmer 

√ 

hister 

√ 

wolf x kitchen 

√ 

nostchen 

√ 

eye x nostril 

√ 

hunril 

√ 

country x hungry x pringry x 

wealth x princess 

√ 

kitcess x 




Regular word 

Non-word 

= 3 correct 

= 7 correct 

= 6 correct 

From these raw scores it looks as though this child reads regular words and non-words equally well, 

but finds exception words difficult. 

However, raw scores are misleading and you cannot draw any conclusions from them. 

You need to convert raw scores to stanine scores using the normative data tables. 

Using stanine scores, the test is designed to reveal three patterns (‘profiles’) of word reading. 

This can be done by simply comparing the child’s stanine score for exception words with their stanine 

score for non-words. 



As you can see, these stanine scores give the child a 

lexical-semantic profile. He/she relies mostly in reading on 

phonological recoding processes, which can read nonwords 

and regular words, whether or not the latter are already 

familiar to the child. However, he/she has difficulty with 

exception words, as these can only be read accurately by 

lexical-semantic processes. Intervention for this child should 

concentrate on developing his/her lexical-semantic processes. 

14


Example 3 


do 

√ 

frog 

√ 

froll 

√ 

bear x hill 

√ 

mong 

√ 

what 

√ 

monster x merfar x 

people 

√ 

farmer x hister x 

wolf x kitchen x nostchen x 

eye x nostril x hunril x 

country x hungry x pringry x 

wealth x princess x kitcess x 




Regular word 

Non-word 

= 3 correct 

= 2 correct 

= 2 correct 

From these raw scores it looks as though this child has equal difficulty reading all three types of word. 

However, raw scores are misleading and you cannot draw any conclusions from them. 

You need to convert raw scores to stanine scores using the normative data tables. 

Using stanine scores, the test is designed to reveal three patterns (‘profiles’) of word reading. 

This can be done by simply comparing the child’s stanine score for exception words with their stanine 

score for non-words. 



As you can see, these stanine scores give the child a mixed 

profile. He/she has not developed either set of word reading 

processes to an age-appropriate level, and has no relative 

strength or weakness in one or other set. Intervention for this 

child should concentrate on developing both phonological 

recoding and lexical-semantic processes. 

15


Using the Diagnostic 

Test of Word Reading 

Processes and 

Phonological 

Assessment Battery 

together 

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Word Reading Processes 

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GL Assessment’s Phonological 

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Diagnostic Test of Word Reading 

Processes. The latter is designed 

to benchmark and test pupils’ 

developing skills in word reading 

and can be used to track progress 

as part of a school’s assessment 

regime. If persistent problems are 

detected then the specialist 

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PhAB, a well-established test that 

looks at six different areas of 

phonological processing. 

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DIAGNOSTIC TEST OF WORD READING PROCESSES

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