Oral Passage Understanding Scale (OPUS) assesses listening comprehension in children and young people.

OPUS Manual
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Oral Passage Understanding Scale

OPUS

Oral Passage Understanding Scale (OPUS) assesses listening comprehension in children and young people.

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Publication date:
2017
Age range:
5 to 21 years
Scores/interpretation:
Age- and grade-based standard scores and percentiles, test-age and grade equivalents
Qualification level:
B
Completion time:
10 to 20 minutes
Administration:
Individually administered; the examiner reads a passage and related questions aloud from a self-standing easel and the examinee responds orally—no reading or writing required
Norms:
Based on a stratified sample of 1,517 individuals that is representative of the U.S. population in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, parent education level, and geographic region

The Oral Passage Understanding Scale is a new measure of listening (auditory) comprehension designed to assess the comprehension of spoken language in a natural context.

Benefits

  • Provide a cohesive evaluation across a broad range of language areas.
  • Determine how well a person can integrate and apply these skills.
  • Evaluate a person's ability to listen to passages that are read aloud and recall information about them. 
  • Evaluate the ability to integrate and apply knowledge in three structural categories of language: Lexical/Semantic, Syntactic, Supralinguistic.
  • Measure memory skills, which are integral to listening comprehension.
  • Answer a variety of referrals (i.e., Can a student sufficiently understand and retain information heard in class?)

Features

An excellent companion test to the CASL-2, use OPUS on its own to quickly measure listening comprehension.

  • Includes 17 passages, each with 7 to 10 associated questions.
  • Offers an in-depth picture of 14 spoken language skills.
  • Each item set is based on examinee's age and ability, and has 5 passages and up to 44 items.
  • Passages are arranged in order of difficulty and are carefully crafted to offer a variety of content and styles.
  • OPUS components include a record form, easel, manual, and training audio files.
  • Standardization for the OPUS is based on a sample of 1,517 individuals ages 5 to 21 years.
  • Co-normed with CASL-2.
 

Resources

The following resources are available for OPUS.