spelling performance, 4th grade, school, student, children 

The DRT 4 has a dual purpose: 1. it objectively measures a student's spelling performance. Due to the good differentiation in the lower performance range, the test is particularly suitable for the diagnosis of spelling difficulties. 2. the DRT 4 identifies specific areas of error in the following areas: Sound discrimination and sound sequence, letter connections (st/sp, pf, qu), doubling/stretching, morpheme constancy in different word forms, derivation of the ä from a and the final letter by lengthening, the prefix ver-, capitalization and lower case. On these bases it is possible to decide about the necessity and the kind of promotion and to control its success. DRT 4 is available in two parallel forms with 42 words each, which are entered into cloze sentences after dictation.

For the 3rd, updated and re-normed edition, the procedure was re-normed on a sample of 2,055 students from 12 states. In the course of the renormalization of the DRT 4, the dictation texts were slightly adapted (affecting two sentences in test form B) and the error analysis was revised. The manual was updated and a chapter on models of spelling acquisition was added.