The Assessment of Written Phrasal Constructs and Grammar of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students with Varying Expressive Language Abilities

Table 2

Assessment measures, definitions, and examples.

Assessment measure	Definition	Example
T-unit	An independent clause and all subordinate clauses	The boy is running
WER I	Perfect T-unit: no grammatical errors	The boy is running
WER II	Flawed T-unit: contains all the main critical structures but has one or more surface errors (e.g., tense errors, subject-verb agreement, article error, plurality errors, and incorrect prepositions)	The boy is run
WER III	Perfect word string: 3+ consecutive words within a T-unit not deemed perfect or flawed	The boy is running an girl (4-word perfect word string)
Phrasal error (PE)	Confused statements that were unintelligible in English or ASL	Cat you ah is so is pay so is you is you yes is pay yes
Total # of words	All words in the writing sample	The boy is running to the store (7 words)
Total # of unique words	All unduplicated words in a writing sample (includes base, derived, and inflected words)	The boy is running to the store (6 unique words)