Welcome to DiSTs

The Diagnostic Spelling Test – Sounds (DiSTs) tests if a person can represent some of the very frequently occurring sounds in the English language using the appropriate letter(s).

Proficient spellers use two key processes: translating sounds to letters and their knowledge of spellings of whole words. The DiSTs evaluates one of these processes, namely the process of translating single sounds into letters.

The DiSTs is composed of 32 items (ie., sounds). The tester says the sounds and the speller has to write down the letter or letters that represent each sound. This test can be administered to a group or individual students.

At the end of the test, the tester gets an overview of which sounds the speller can represent in isolation. The tester may then decide to train the sounds that the speller cannot represent accurately yet.