There is a lot of controversy surrounding the use of nonsense words in teaching phonics. Today I’m sharing two compelling reasons why every teacher needs to use nonsense words when assessing phonics. Meaningless words are words that follow the acoustic pattern of the English language but have no meaning.
By giving them an example (dag) and unprecedented (dog), they quickly catch the crap. Click here right now to know more about nonsense words.
You've probably heard of nonwords or pseudo-words before. It is the same thing as gibberish, and the terms can be used interchangeably.
Reasons to use nonsense in phonics assessment:
1. A student can only read meaningless words if he can decipher the word.
The main reason meaningless words are important for sound evaluation and deciphering is that students cannot pronounce/decode words without understanding the sound skills in the word.
There are two parts to reading the actual word. Decipher the word (or its sound) and understand the word (creating meaning).
When a student reads words in context (for example, a sentence, passage, or story), context can often help them understand the meaning of the word.
It can also help them make educated guesses about what the word is. We know that memorizing words is not an effective way to learn to read because if a child has never seen a word before, they will not be able to decipher or understand it.
2. Meaningless words can be used to assess the readability of words with any phonic ability.
Since nonsense words can be generated for any skill or syllable, you can always be sure that you will be able to judge a phonics student by nonsense regardless of their reading level. All you have to do is determine which phonetic ability you want to evaluate and then generate gibberish using that ability.