ALTA COMPETENCY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
SET A+
✔✔diphthong - ✔✔two vowels standing adjacent in the same syllable whose sounds
blend smoothly together in one syllable. Only 4 in the English language: oi, oy, ou, ow
✔✔direct instruction - ✔✔explicitly teaching a concept
✔✔discovery teaching - ✔✔therapist allows students to discover information by asking
them questions rather than by telling
✔✔double-deficit hypothesis - ✔✔Deficiency in both phoneme awareness and naming
speed
✔✔Dyscalculia - ✔✔difficulty with math
✔✔Dysarthia - ✔✔neurological oral-motor dysfunction including weakness of the
musculature necessary for making the coordinated movements of speech production
✔✔dysgraphia - ✔✔involves difficulty with writing in the actual motor patterns used in
writing and/or formulation of written composition
✔✔dysnomia - ✔✔difficulty in word finding
✔✔Dyspraxia - ✔✔Difficulty with motor planning; impacts upon a person's ability to
coordinate appropriate body movements
✔✔echolalia - ✔✔repetition of words or phrases just spoken
✔✔elison - ✔✔the omission of a sound or syllable in a word in pronunciation; a
language task in which a part is taken away -- also known as deletion
, ✔✔Elkonian boxes - ✔✔an instructional technique to build phonemic awareness in
which the teacher draws a series of squares, repeats a word, and then asks the student
to place a token in the appropriate number of boxes to indicate how many phonemes in
the target word. E.g., for the target word wish, the students would select three tokens
and place each of them in three different boxes
✔✔embedded phonics - ✔✔PA & phonics taught implicitly through reading real words in
text
✔✔encoding - ✔✔spelling; unblending sounds to spell
✔✔equivocal sounds - ✔✔uncertain; applied to a letter that represents more than one
sound or to a sound that is spelled in more than one way
✔✔ethnographic observation - ✔✔a type of qualitative research in which researchers
observe, listen, and ask questions to collect descriptive data in order to understand the
content, context, and dynamics of an environment
✔✔etymology - ✔✔the origin or derivation of a word
✔✔explicit phonics - ✔✔Directly tells sounds of letters; teaches how to blend sounds
together.
✔✔Fernald Method - ✔✔technique for learning words that involves the visual, auditory,
kinesthetic, and tactile (VAKT) modalities. The student looks at a word while saying and
tracing it.
✔✔fluency - ✔✔reading like we speak so we can gain meaning from text; composed of
accuracy, rate, and prosody
✔✔fMRI - ✔✔functional magnetic resonance imaging; technology that allows researcher
to see which parts of the brain are getting the most blood flow -- and hence are the most
active
✔✔gerund - ✔✔an English word ending in -ing & used as a noun (she loves baking and
cooking)
✔✔guided discovery - ✔✔a method of leading students to new learning through
questioning
✔✔grapheme - ✔✔a significant visual shape; a single letter or letter cluster which
represents a speech sound
SET A+
✔✔diphthong - ✔✔two vowels standing adjacent in the same syllable whose sounds
blend smoothly together in one syllable. Only 4 in the English language: oi, oy, ou, ow
✔✔direct instruction - ✔✔explicitly teaching a concept
✔✔discovery teaching - ✔✔therapist allows students to discover information by asking
them questions rather than by telling
✔✔double-deficit hypothesis - ✔✔Deficiency in both phoneme awareness and naming
speed
✔✔Dyscalculia - ✔✔difficulty with math
✔✔Dysarthia - ✔✔neurological oral-motor dysfunction including weakness of the
musculature necessary for making the coordinated movements of speech production
✔✔dysgraphia - ✔✔involves difficulty with writing in the actual motor patterns used in
writing and/or formulation of written composition
✔✔dysnomia - ✔✔difficulty in word finding
✔✔Dyspraxia - ✔✔Difficulty with motor planning; impacts upon a person's ability to
coordinate appropriate body movements
✔✔echolalia - ✔✔repetition of words or phrases just spoken
✔✔elison - ✔✔the omission of a sound or syllable in a word in pronunciation; a
language task in which a part is taken away -- also known as deletion
, ✔✔Elkonian boxes - ✔✔an instructional technique to build phonemic awareness in
which the teacher draws a series of squares, repeats a word, and then asks the student
to place a token in the appropriate number of boxes to indicate how many phonemes in
the target word. E.g., for the target word wish, the students would select three tokens
and place each of them in three different boxes
✔✔embedded phonics - ✔✔PA & phonics taught implicitly through reading real words in
text
✔✔encoding - ✔✔spelling; unblending sounds to spell
✔✔equivocal sounds - ✔✔uncertain; applied to a letter that represents more than one
sound or to a sound that is spelled in more than one way
✔✔ethnographic observation - ✔✔a type of qualitative research in which researchers
observe, listen, and ask questions to collect descriptive data in order to understand the
content, context, and dynamics of an environment
✔✔etymology - ✔✔the origin or derivation of a word
✔✔explicit phonics - ✔✔Directly tells sounds of letters; teaches how to blend sounds
together.
✔✔Fernald Method - ✔✔technique for learning words that involves the visual, auditory,
kinesthetic, and tactile (VAKT) modalities. The student looks at a word while saying and
tracing it.
✔✔fluency - ✔✔reading like we speak so we can gain meaning from text; composed of
accuracy, rate, and prosody
✔✔fMRI - ✔✔functional magnetic resonance imaging; technology that allows researcher
to see which parts of the brain are getting the most blood flow -- and hence are the most
active
✔✔gerund - ✔✔an English word ending in -ing & used as a noun (she loves baking and
cooking)
✔✔guided discovery - ✔✔a method of leading students to new learning through
questioning
✔✔grapheme - ✔✔a significant visual shape; a single letter or letter cluster which
represents a speech sound
