Toward a Reliable Measure of Prosody: An Investigation of Rater Consistency
Abstract
Reliable and valid measures of oral reading fluency are widely used in elementary language arts classes, but there are relatively few measures of prosody defined as the characteristics of pitch, stress, and phrasing students use to convey their understanding of text. Most publishers have reported limited reliability data of the few prosody-measuring instruments available. This article examines the efficacy of the WOW Prosody Rubric. This instrument uses two skills categories: Phrasing and Expression, each divided into several dimensions. Correlation coefficients between random pairs of raters selected for analysis and determined using a Spearman rho, revealed a range from low (0.2973) to moderate (0.5277) correlation. Although these coefficients are less than ideal, this study indicates that it’s possible to create an instrument to assess prosody. The researchers suggest refining this instrument and then doing further field testing will increase the reliability of this measure of students’ mastery of prosody.