This Examiner’s Practice Workbook provides helpful instructions and scoring practice for the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills™ (TILLS™).
Section I provides step-by-step practice exercises for each of the 15 TILLS subtests. The exercises provide opportunity to check your understanding of both administration and scoring procedures.
Section II reviews how to transform raw scores to standard scores and percentile ranks. It also shows how to use standard scores to calculate composite scores and an Identification Core score for the student’s age. The Identification Core score can be compared with a cut score to identify language/literacy disorders.
Section III focuses on how to obtain the three scores of the Written Expression subtest. It includes a tutorial on grammar and T-unit division and numerous scored examples to show you how to handle challenging issues.
As you use the Practice Workbook, be sure to have on hand your TILLS Examiner’s Manual, a blank Examiner Record Form, and the Digital Audio Files (on USB drive). One section of the Digital Audio Files provides sound clips to use with the practice exercises.
Completing the exercises in this Practice Workbook will help you:
Practice establishing basals and ceilings
Understand when probes can be used
See when item answers can reveal a student’s strengths as well as weaknesses
Know how to handle a student’s self-corrections
Make modifications for students with special needs
Know what to do if a student expresses frustration or declines to do a task
Check your understanding of counting words, T-units, and word errors in the Written Expression subtest
Learn when it can be useful to compare a student’s responses on one subtest to results on other subtests
Keep your Practice Workbook as a helpful reminder of administration rules and a quick reference for scoring assistance. You’ll find it a useful tool for efficient and accurate TILLS administration.
Test of Integrated Language & Literacy Skills (TILLS) is the reliable, valid assessment professionals need to test oral and written language skills in students ages 6 - 18 years. TILLS is a comprehensive, norm-referenced test that has been standardized for three purposes:
To identify language/literacy disorders
To document patterns of relative strengths and weaknesses
To track changes in language and literacy skills over time
To achieve these purposes, TILLS is constructed to allow you to derive scores for identifying, tracking, and profiling a student’s strengths and weaknesses and interpreting the results to support decisions about what to do next.
15 Extensively Researched Subtests
The TILLS assessment is all professionals need to capture the complete picture of students’ oral and written language skills. TILLS is composed of 15 subtests that allow examiners to assess and compare students’ language-literacy skills at both the sound/word level and the sentence/discourse level across the four oral and written modalities—listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Curriculum Relevant
TILLS measures integrated language-literacy abilities that reflect the complex language and literacy demands of the general education curriculum.
Backed By Unparalleled Data
Each TILLS subtest has been fine-tuned to meet strong psychometric standards using scientific evidence gathered in numerous pilot studies and field trials, a national beta trial, and a standardization study with more than 1200 children and adolescents.
Strong Specificity and Sensitivity
TILLS tested both sensitivity and specificity across the full age range covered by the test. In the manual, diagnostic accuracy data are broken down into nine different “age bands” meaningful to the development of language and literacy skills. Sensitivity ranges from 81% to 97%, and specificity ranges from 81% to 100%.
Streamlined Assessment
Professionals can administer the entire test, single subtests, or combinations of subtests in one or more sessions. Comprehensive assessment can typically be administered in 90 minutes or less.
Useful for a Wide Range of Students
TILLS is ideal for evaluating students:
suspected of having a primary language impairment, also called specific language impairment
suspected of having a learning disability, reading disability, or dyslexia
known to have an existing condition associated with difficulties in spoken and written language (such as deaf or hard of hearing, autism spectrum disorder, or intellectual disability)
struggling with language and literacy comprehension and social communication skills (such as social communication disorder)
Here’s how to use the TILLS Examiner’s Kit to screen for and diagnose language and literacy disorders, including dyslexia:
First, you’ll identify at-risk students with the evidence based Student Language Scale (SLS), a quick and easy one-page, 12-question screener filled out by the teacher, parent, and student. Complete in less than five minutes, the SLS helps you:
Screen for language/literacy disorders by gathering teachers’ and parents’ ratings of students.
Gather input about a struggling student’s strengths and needs from multiple sources—a key requirement of IDEA.
Enhance home–school communication by gaining new insight into student performance, whether or not there are concerns.
After the SLS helps you identify children at risk for a language/literacy disorder, use TILLS for diagnosis. Here’s how:
Administer all 15 TILLS subtests.
Complete the first page of the Examiner’s Record Form, a chart that helps you score the subtests, compare the scores to those of the student’s same-age peers, and compare the sound/ word composite score to the sentence discourse composite score.
Complete the Identification Chart to determine if the student has a disorder.
Complete the Profile Chart for an at-a-glance, big-picture look at the student’s current language and literacy skills.
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