MA-thesis about new spelling test

In the second semester of the 2025/2026 academic year, Roos van der Veen wrote her Neurolinguistics Master's thesis within the CDD. Her research focused on the development of a new first-year secondary school dictation. She summarizes her research as follows:

The signaling dictation "Het Wonderlijke Weer" (The Wonderful Weather) has been used for quite some time to identify persistent spelling problems in the first years of secondary education. However, the dictation no longer sufficiently aligns with the students' perception of the world, and the dictation's norming is no longer current. The goal of this research is to renew the dictation "Het Wonderlijke Weer" so that it once again connects with the first-year students' experiences and, at the same time, provides a representative picture of their spelling proficiency. To investigate this, the original dictation was renewed under the title "De Magie van Muziek" (The Magic of Music), where the outdated theme was modernized, and dated words were replaced with more recognizable ones. Additionally, during the design of the new dictation, face, construct, convergent, and ecological validity, as well as internal consistency as a measure of reliability, were taken into account. Finally, the revised dictation was administered in first-year classes of pre-vocational secondary education (vmbo). The results showed that the renewed dictation is able to distinguish between students with and without spelling problems and also measures various aspects of spelling proficiency. The results also showed a high degree of validity and and reliability. All in all, based on this pilot study, the new dictation seems suitable for identifying persistent spelling problems in vmbo first-year classes. Further research involving larger and more diverse groups of first-year students is necessary to be able to use the dictation in all first-year classes of secondary education in the future, so that students with spelling problems can receive appropriate support in time.