ICAS Spelling
|
Quick links |
Overview
The International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) Spelling is an independent spelling assessment developed in conjunction with Macquarie Dictionary. It assesses and reports students’ skills at spelling words in four different contexts: dictation, proofreading, error correction and applying rules and conventions.
The words tested range from frequently-used/common words with simple spelling patterns to less frequently-used/less common and technical words with difficult or unusual spelling patterns. These words can be organised under four types of spelling knowledge:
- visual - using memory of the visual features of a word
- phonological - using sound-letter relationships
- morphological - using parts of words to build word families
- etymological - using word origins and derivations
The level of difficulty of the words assessed increases both within a paper and from Paper A to Paper E. Each paper contains some words that are easy to spell for students at their year level, some that are of medium difficulty and some that are quite hard and challenging.
To find out more about the spelling skills assessed download the ICAS Spelling assessment framework (pdf).
Test Structure
|
Paper |
Breakdown of Questions |
Test Duration |
|
A |
12 dictation (teacher marked) / 13 multiple choice 'rules and conventions' / 6 proofreading / 9 correcting (teacher marked) |
Dictation plus 25 minutes |
|
B |
15 dictation (teacher marked) / 13 multiple choice 'rules and conventions' / 8 proofreading / 9 correcting (teacher marked) |
Dictation plus 25 minutes |
|
C |
15 dictation (teacher marked) / 13 multiple choice 'rules and conventions' / 8 proofreading/ 9 correcting (teacher marked) |
Dictation plus 25 minutes |
|
D |
15 dictation (teacher marked) / 15 multiple choice 'rules and conventions' / 10 proofreading / 10 correcting (teacher marked) |
Dictation plus 25 minutes |
|
E |
15 dictation (teacher marked) / 15 multiple choice 'rules and conventions' / 10 proofreading / 10 correcting (teacher marked) |
Dictation plus 25 minutes |
 |
If you have any queries, please read through our list of |
Print this page
