What people need to know about the use of pseudo, or 'nonsense' words in reading instruction
Posted: Sat May 14, 2016 11:38 am
The International Foundation for Effective Reading Instruction promotes the global use of England's Year One Phonics Screening Check (which is statutory in England).
If the same phonics check were to be used internationally, we could get at least 'an idea' about teaching effectiveness with regard to teaching the letter/s-sound correspondences of the very complex English alphabetic code (the most complex alphabetic code in the world) - and with regard to the learners' capacity to read new, unknown words (the synthesising, or 'blending/decoding' skill). In other words, this is a measure of the 'technical' knowledge and skills of learners - but most importantly it is also a measure of 'teaching effectiveness'.
The Department for Education in England uploads the phonics check after its official annual use in England which means that it is 'free' for any teachers to utilise. This means that teachers in any contexts where English is taught could take advantage of the phonics check and then compare their results with the existing, and growing findings year-on-year in England. Thus, results in England provide an existing 'baseline' for others internationally.
IFERI knows of a handful of schools taking advantage of the phonics check because the teachers WANT to know about their teaching effectiveness. (And surely all teachers should want to know about their teaching effectiveness in such an essential field.) You can read about two such schools - one in Costa Rica and one in Australia via the two links immediately below. Note that in Costa Rica where English is a second language, the children's results were higher than the average in England in one particular year:
http://www.iferi.org/resources-and-guidance/
http://www.iferi.org/why-we-use-the-pho ... australia/
There is a worrying downside, however, to the advent of the Year One Phonics Screening Check and its inclusion of pseudo words or nonsense words. The downside is the proliferation of phonics resources provided by manufacturers and publishers - and by others making 'free' resources - of nonsense words content. Much of this material consists of nonsense words with 'illegal' or 'inappropriate' spelling patterns. That is, the structure/content of the nonsense words includes spelling patterns not seen in real English words (or very rarely seen). This means our youngest learners are frequently playing with printed words with spelling patterns that are not advisable for them to keep seeing.
So, on the one hand the children's learning diet consists of lots of words with illegal spelling patterns for them to blend in anticipation of the Year One Phonics Screening Check, and on the other hand we are trying to teach them how to spell correctly with the actual spelling patterns we see in English spelling. Sheer logic suggests that this is not really a good idea - a contradiction in terms.
The practice with nonsense words may well support learners to hone their blending skill (which is not in itself a bad thing), but there is no need to give the learners a diet of nonsense words when we can actually provide plenty of real words to practise blending that are 'new' in two senses: - firstly, 'new' because the children have not seen the words in print before so they are reading them for the very first time and, secondly, 'new' because the words are not in their existing SPOKEN language.
Having included new real words for them to apply their alphabetic code knowledge and to practise their blending skill, teachers can then expand the learners' knowledge of these new words by including some meaning-making (vocabulary development). Thus, there are advantages technically to using new real words (a 'cumulative' bank of real words that match their alphabetic code knowledge taught to date) - whilst also teaching them the meaning of any words which are new to the learners themselves. [The 'five pillars of literacy' based on the findings of an extensive scrutiny of research on reading instruction include the need to teach new vocabulary explicitly.]
Perhaps a week or two prior to children undertaking the actual phonics check, the teacher could introduce a few games involving some nonsense words provided as 'alien' names or language. This will familiarise the children with the format of the forthcoming check. That is all that is needed at most. But, again, the words should arguably be based on legal/appropriate spelling patterns and not illegal spelling patterns.
The Department for Education has gone to a lot of trouble to select the 20 real words and the 20 nonsense words in the check very carefully. This is described in the following report - and see in particular section 3.1 here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... report.pdf
If more people were aware of the huge amount of thought and hard work that has gone into providing the 40 words for the annual phonics check, perhaps this might encourage global uptake.
Also, in England the results have risen year-on-year since the piloting of the check in 2011. This more than suggests that it is informing the teaching profession of the importance of teaching effectiveness.
There are still those who are vociferously against the Year One Phonics Screening Check. Be it on their own conscience.
But, the prolific production and use of nonsense words based on illegal/inappropriate spelling patterns lays bare the lack of professional knowledge and understanding of phonics teaching and practice.
If the same phonics check were to be used internationally, we could get at least 'an idea' about teaching effectiveness with regard to teaching the letter/s-sound correspondences of the very complex English alphabetic code (the most complex alphabetic code in the world) - and with regard to the learners' capacity to read new, unknown words (the synthesising, or 'blending/decoding' skill). In other words, this is a measure of the 'technical' knowledge and skills of learners - but most importantly it is also a measure of 'teaching effectiveness'.
The Department for Education in England uploads the phonics check after its official annual use in England which means that it is 'free' for any teachers to utilise. This means that teachers in any contexts where English is taught could take advantage of the phonics check and then compare their results with the existing, and growing findings year-on-year in England. Thus, results in England provide an existing 'baseline' for others internationally.
IFERI knows of a handful of schools taking advantage of the phonics check because the teachers WANT to know about their teaching effectiveness. (And surely all teachers should want to know about their teaching effectiveness in such an essential field.) You can read about two such schools - one in Costa Rica and one in Australia via the two links immediately below. Note that in Costa Rica where English is a second language, the children's results were higher than the average in England in one particular year:
http://www.iferi.org/resources-and-guidance/
http://www.iferi.org/why-we-use-the-pho ... australia/
There is a worrying downside, however, to the advent of the Year One Phonics Screening Check and its inclusion of pseudo words or nonsense words. The downside is the proliferation of phonics resources provided by manufacturers and publishers - and by others making 'free' resources - of nonsense words content. Much of this material consists of nonsense words with 'illegal' or 'inappropriate' spelling patterns. That is, the structure/content of the nonsense words includes spelling patterns not seen in real English words (or very rarely seen). This means our youngest learners are frequently playing with printed words with spelling patterns that are not advisable for them to keep seeing.
So, on the one hand the children's learning diet consists of lots of words with illegal spelling patterns for them to blend in anticipation of the Year One Phonics Screening Check, and on the other hand we are trying to teach them how to spell correctly with the actual spelling patterns we see in English spelling. Sheer logic suggests that this is not really a good idea - a contradiction in terms.
The practice with nonsense words may well support learners to hone their blending skill (which is not in itself a bad thing), but there is no need to give the learners a diet of nonsense words when we can actually provide plenty of real words to practise blending that are 'new' in two senses: - firstly, 'new' because the children have not seen the words in print before so they are reading them for the very first time and, secondly, 'new' because the words are not in their existing SPOKEN language.
Having included new real words for them to apply their alphabetic code knowledge and to practise their blending skill, teachers can then expand the learners' knowledge of these new words by including some meaning-making (vocabulary development). Thus, there are advantages technically to using new real words (a 'cumulative' bank of real words that match their alphabetic code knowledge taught to date) - whilst also teaching them the meaning of any words which are new to the learners themselves. [The 'five pillars of literacy' based on the findings of an extensive scrutiny of research on reading instruction include the need to teach new vocabulary explicitly.]
Perhaps a week or two prior to children undertaking the actual phonics check, the teacher could introduce a few games involving some nonsense words provided as 'alien' names or language. This will familiarise the children with the format of the forthcoming check. That is all that is needed at most. But, again, the words should arguably be based on legal/appropriate spelling patterns and not illegal spelling patterns.
The Department for Education has gone to a lot of trouble to select the 20 real words and the 20 nonsense words in the check very carefully. This is described in the following report - and see in particular section 3.1 here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... report.pdf
If more people were aware of the huge amount of thought and hard work that has gone into providing the 40 words for the annual phonics check, perhaps this might encourage global uptake.
Also, in England the results have risen year-on-year since the piloting of the check in 2011. This more than suggests that it is informing the teaching profession of the importance of teaching effectiveness.
There are still those who are vociferously against the Year One Phonics Screening Check. Be it on their own conscience.
But, the prolific production and use of nonsense words based on illegal/inappropriate spelling patterns lays bare the lack of professional knowledge and understanding of phonics teaching and practice.