1. A system for administering an assessment of literacy and linguistic abilities in a student comprising: means for audibly projecting a word to a student, the word comprising a plurality of phonemes, each phoneme corresponding to a sound and to at least one letter; means for asking the student to provide an attempt to spell the word based upon the sounds in the word, the attempt comprising at least one letter; means for receiving the student attempt; and means for scoring the student attempt, wherein at least partial credit is given for a student attempt that is incorrect but that includes at least one acceptable letter-phoneme correspondence.