Dyslexia and the Nonsense Word Conundrum
Dyslexia
Training Institute: 3.31.2017 by Dr. Kelli Sandman-Hurley
The
use of nonsense words in intervention programs for reading and spelling to
struggling readers is ubiquitous. It is ubiquitous in assessments too.
Publishers use the rationale that nonsense words help the teacher and assessor
know whether or not the student is able to transfer what they have learned
about decoding to new words and this signals progress. The problem with this is
twofold. First, many of the nonsense words that are used are not possible
letter strings in the English language. (For a detailed and well-support
description of this, please read Gina Cooke’s article). Secondly, the English
writing system is based on meaning before phonology, so when a student is
reading a word with no meaning, it can be impossible to really determine what
the correct pronunciation is. In teacher trainings, we always ask the group,
how do you pronounce the letter string *? The answer we always get
is /chom/ or [ʧɑm] in IPA. The problem with this
answer, is that the correct answer is really, we can’t know what the correct
pronunciation is until we know what the word is. In the case of a digraph like
the meaning and etymology of the word will drive the pronunciation.
Look at the following three common words: chip, machine and ache. Their
histories drive their pronunciations, so how in the world can a student know
which is correct?
Today
I observed a very good teacher using letter tiles to teach spelling. She was
dictating a list of real words and then veered into the nonsense word
territory. What happened during this time is not inconsequential, it is
downright confusing to students. Here is the list of words she dictated. READ
MORE >>
April
20 - May 8, 2020
Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level 8.7
Lexical
Density: 55.8%
Total
word count 278
Unique
word count 155
21
hard words
Sentence
count 17
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