Assessment of skill in inferring unfamiliar word meanings

Skill in inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words enables learners to ascertain word meanings from context. Standards documents and assessments often call for this skill in the primary grades. However, there is limited research on first- and second-grade children’s development of this skill. This paper reports on the development and psychometric properties of the Meaning Inference Assessment (MIA), designed to assess first -and second-grade children’s skill in inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words from sentential and pictorial context. Each assessment item features a target word and one of four types of context clues: an antonym, definition, picture, or synonym clue. The assessment was administered to 142 first- and second-grade children (M_age = 7.4 years, SD = 0.69). A confirmatory factor analysis indicated the assessment had an adequate fit to the four clue types and strong internal consistency. The assessment may be a useful tool for future educational and research applications.