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Reading test for British kids to include
'non-words'
Sunday February 20, 2011 12:49:27 PM,
IANS
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London:
The British government has drawn up new plans to include "made-up"
words such as "koob" or "zort" in a new reading test for
six-year-olds - an idea that has brought about criticism from
literary experts.
The government said non-words were being included to check pupils'
ability to decode words using phonics.
This is the reading system by which children sound out words using
letter sounds.
Non-words were being included to check that children were not just
regurgitating memorised words, a spokesman for the department for
education said, according to BBC.
The proposed new test will take about 10 minutes to complete and
would include about 40 items - words and non-words.
Experts, however, say the approach will confuse those just
beginning to read.
The UK Literacy Association said the plan was "bonkers" as the
purpose of reading was to understand meaning.
"We think that seems a bit bonkers when the whole purpose of
reading is to understand words," said David Reedy, president of
the UK Literacy Association.
Reedy said the inclusion of non-words would be counter-productive
since most six-year-olds expect to make sense of what they read.
He said the test itself was sending out the message that all words
are decodable using phonics when they are not.
"There are many words with which you have to use a 'look and say'
approach. This is the case with many common words such as 'the'
and 'once'," he said.
This was because the English language is not phonically regular
like German or Finnish, he said.
"Children should be using a number of sources of information to be
able to work out what a word is. There is the context, the
sentence itself and whether they have that word in their spoken
lexicon," Reedy said.
He said it might be useful for the department for education to
explain why the secretary of state's surname, Gove, did not rhyme
with "love".
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