The following updates have been made recently (April 2022) to the main grading instructions and are summarized below. Please review them carefully before continuing to transcribe.
1. Rules related to hyphens:
• Insert a hyphen at the end of any non-word utterance (which should always be transcribed phonetically). For example, "klag-." In contrast, utterances that sound like real words should be inserted as the actual word, without the addition of the hyphen.
• Insert a hyphen after any utterance that contain just a single phoneme (i.e., any of the phonemes on this chart). As an example, if the student says /o/ as in "hot," you would insert "o-." Some other examples might be: "oe-," "au-," "ch-," etc.
2. How should I handle pauses as students sound out words?
If the reader says all of the right sounds in the right order without pausing in between sounds, mark it as correct, even if the word sounds "stretched out." However, if the student takes an audible pause in between the sounds, mark it as incorrect, even if all the sounds are in the right order. See examples under #5 here.
3. I can transcribe an utterance either using the phonetic transcription or using an actual word. Which should I use?
If the student inserts a real word, please transcribe the actual word. If the student inserts a non-word utterance, please transcribe the utterance phonetically using the phoneme chart, and insert a hyphen at the end of the utterance (see #1 above).
4. Transcribing letter names:
If the reader inserts the NAME of a letter, please transcribe the letter in upper case. For example, if the student inserts "vee-," please enter "V." Similarly, if the student inserts "aech-," please insert "H." As another example:
