The Assessment of Emergent and Early Literacy Skills in the Akshara Languages.

The assessment of language and literacy skills in the akshara languages pose distinct challenges that are related to the specificities of the orthography, contextual variability and population diversity, which in turn tend to be compounded by generally low levels of achievement. In this chapter, we discuss an assessment framework targeted at capturing children’s language and literacy learning in the early years. Using assessments for Hindi and Kannada as cross-linguistic illustrative examples, we bring focus on psychometric rigor, test utility for research purposes versus practice, appropriateness of test adaptations, and challenges related to monitoring growth in language and literacy skills over time. A key consideration is the urgent need for sensitivity of assessments to contextual factors including demographic diversity (e.g. socioeconomic factors, home language(s), and access to literacy resources), classroom practices, and orthography