Non-words, nonsense words, pseudo-words - all are names for invented words that have no meaning or contextual use but have regular phonic construction.

What is their place in a formal reading program?

The purpose of a ‘non-word’ assessment is to determine if students are applying phonic rules to each letter or letter grouping within a word.

Although regular word recognition assessments have an important place in reading assessment, non-word assessments can more easily enable the assessor to determine whether students simply know the words by sight or are applying decoding strategies.

Another important difference between word recognition and non-word assessments is that non-word assessments do not date. They also circumvent cultural barriers.

A student has to know the rules of phonics well enough to be able to read non-words. The speed at which the non-words are read differentiates readers who are competent and at ease from those who are not. The difference in speed is due to time taken in processing the phonic rules that are applied in the recognition of written words.

Non-word tests artificially recreate the situation of the student coming across an unfamiliar word and the assessor can identify which phonemes or phonic patterns are unknown.  For instance, if splurg was read as splug, then difficulty with the sound ur is suggested.

A non-word test is a valuable tool in helping to determine which skills of phoneme recognition need to be taught.

CONSIDERATIONS

• Non-word assessments are not designed for beginning readers.
• They should only be used to help determine what teaching should take place.
• They should not be regarded a stand-alone test. They should be used alongside an assessment of contextual reading.

• Students who can recognise words and read at, or above, the ‘average’ level for their age would not be considered to have a decoding problem and therefore would generally not need to be assessed with a non-word test.