MABEL – Multilanguage Assessment Battery of Early Literacy: Approaches to Literacy Testing Across Languages

We propose a symposium to present MABEL (Multi-Language Assessment Battery of Early Literacy), a web-based tool for the assessment of children’s early literacy and related skills across several European languages. The battery is designed to be used in research and psycho-educational practice. MABEL comprises measures, directly comparable across languages, and targets foundational literacy skills such as phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming, as well as a variety of reading and spelling measures. It was developed as part of the ELDEL research programme (a Framework 7, Marie Curie ITN) focusing on cross-linguistic studies of literacy development in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, French, Czech, Slovak (Caravolas et al 2012, Caravolas et al 2013).

The MABEL tests enable a systematic screening assessment for identifying children at risk of literacy difficulties, who speak any one, or a combination, of the languages currently within the battery. For this reason it is valuable in various bilingual, multilingual educational and clinical contexts, especially at the onset of literacy instruction. For research purposes, MABEL offers a set of directly comparable measures that can be implemented in cross-linguistic or single-language studies of reading and spelling development.

Each symposium presentation will highlight a specific test bundle (e.g., tests of phoneme awareness, rapid naming, reading, spelling) in the context of its origins in the ELDEL research programme. Moreover, a demonstration will be made of the relevant tests on the MABEL website, including the procedures for downloading and using the materials for standard paper-and-pencil administration, and/or for computer-assisted administration. The Discussion will focus on the benefits and limitations of directly comparable measurement tools, and will consider further approaches for ameliorating assessments of children’s early literacy and related skills in different languages.