Jj is for Jottings 125.  Nonsense Words.

Nonsense words are letter sequences which follow regular phonetic rules and are pronounceable, but which have no meaning.  Examples are ‘bof’, ‘zim’, ‘chog’.  They can also be called nonwords or pseudowords.  There are stages in children’s development where nonsense words may play a part.  These are: babbling, early reading, rhyming, and if they require assistance for speech sound development (speech therapy).   All children babble, but children may not encounter nonsense words when learning to read or to rhyme.  And many will not need speech therapy, or have access to it if they do.

BABBLING IS REALLY NONSENSE WORDS.

In the first few months of life, you and your baby begin to communicate.  You watch each other’s face, take turns to make noises, use facial expression and gestures to accompany your sounds.

By about 6 months, baby’s control over lip and tongue movements has developed enough to produce babble.  Babble is the production of rhythmic sounds in various sequences of vowels and consonants.  Examples are ‘bar bar bar’; ‘doo dar doo’; ‘bub bub’.  These early babbling sounds are similar in all babies, regardless of their native language.  Since it has no meaning, babble is essentially strings of nonsense words.  Through babbling, your child learns to produce the different sound combinations he will later use in speech. You can encourage him by babbling back at him, producing other noises for him to copy, and just talking to him.

By about 9 months of age the variety of sounds your baby produces begins to sound like the sounds produced in English (in this case).  This shows he is listening to the sounds he hears and is learning to copy them.  He also produces patterns which begin to sound like words.  You can encourage these approximations by praising your child, repeating them and showing the corresponding object.  In this way, nonsense words are gradually morphing into real words.

For a bit more context on this and the following stages of development, you can refer to these communication milestones.

NONSENSE WORDS IN EARLY READING.

Even before they formally start to learn to read, children have often picked up sight words from their environment around them – from road signs, advertisements etc.  Therefore you can’t always be sure whether a child is reading from sight or actually decoding.  This is discussed further within the context of decodable readers and synthetic phonics.  Since their repertoire of sight words increases the more they read, it really is worth checking that they can actually decode.  The only way to do this is to have them read nonsense words.  In this way they have no context from which to make a good guess, and they are forced to work out the word using only phonemic awareness skills.

You can create a variety of nonsense words to test knowledge of different rules.  Many reading tests involve a nonsense word component.  Likewise, some tests of spelling can also involve spelling nonsense words.  There may not be just one way to pronounce or spell the nonsense word.  But any reasonable attempt which follows the rules is acceptable.

Children who naturally pick up sight words easily can fool their teachers and parents into thinking they are skilled readers, but in fact lack decoding skills.  This means they fall in a heap when they meet unfamiliar words.  As they progress through school and meet more complex words, the problem becomes increasingly noticeable.

RHYMING AND NONSENSE WORDS.

Nonsense words are really useful in painlessly imparting the concept of rhyming to young children.  Word play with nonsense words can be a lot of fun.  Here are some suggestions for using nonsense words for rhyming.  And real words, too.

NONSENSE WORDS IN SPEECH THERAPY.

Sometimes a child has difficulty in learning to articulate speech sounds to the point where they need speech therapy.  When a child has been substituting one sound for another since they began to use real words, it has become a habit.  For example, saying /t/ instead of /k/.  (Note that sounds develop at different times.  So while that substitution is acceptable at some ages, it becomes unacceptable beyond a certain age and requires therapy.  You can refer to the communication milestones above for some idea of this.)

Overcoming the Habit Factor.

Anyway, the habit factor operates on real words because this is where the child has been consistently using the incorrect sounds.  So if you try and get a child to imitate, say “car”, you’ll almost certainly get “tar”.  The strong habit will overrule everything else, even if the child can imitate /k/ on its own.  So we use nonsense words to “strengthen” the new sound so as to overcome the habit factor.  We practise the new target sound with a variety of vowels and in all positions in nonsense words – beginning, end and middle.  Then the child will be able to overcome the habit when you get to real words.  That is, if you have practised the nonsense words enough.

If you want to know more about why we use a variety of vowels when remediating consonant sounds, you can learn about vowel shapes and the effect of vowel shapes on consonant sounds .

Many well-intentioned parents fall into the trap of trying to get children to correct sound errors by having them repeat words containing the error.  I’m not suggesting you don’t try it.  But whilst it works well in some cases, there are many tricky little variables which may come into play.  So if you try a few times and the child is unable to imitate the target sound in words, you will need to see a speech pathologist to guide you.  Otherwise you are setting your child up for failure and both of you for a great deal of frustration!

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