Are you wondering: Why is using French nonsense words in the classroom useful?
If so, let’s go over what your students can gain from working with “les non-mots”.
What’s a “pseudo-mot”?
Before we get into why nonsense words can help your students read, let’s make sure we’re on the same page.
So, what’s a French nonsense word?
In French, we can call them “les pseudo-mots” or “les non-mots”. (If you know other ways of calling them in French, let me know!)
In the context of literacy, nonsense words are words that follow the spelling and phonics rules, but they aren’t real words. For example, “foseau” or “lopais”.
As they do follow phonics rules, French nonsense words are decodable, which is the main reason we use them in the classroom.
If you’ve adopted the Science of Reading principles, you already know that decoding is a key skill for learning to read.
And we want to offer students a lot of decoding practice.
Reasons for using French nonsense words in the classroom
If students see a word they don’t know, they should still be able to decode it (if they’ve already learned how to decode, of course).
When they’re reading a sentence in a book, they might see a word they’re unable to decode, but you wouldn’t necessarily notice it. They could still “read” the word because they’re deducing what the word is from context, or because they’ve seen that word many times before.
1. So the number one reason for using French nonsense words in the classroom is to assess decoding skills: how well can your students decode?
If students can read the word “lapin” in a sentence, can they also read it if you show the word by itself?
Can they also decode the word “sapin”? If they can, how do you know they haven’t memorized those two words?
That’s where nonsense words come into play!
If students can successfully decode/read nonsense words such as “bapin”, “labin”, “lapun”, “sépin”, etc, then you can feel pretty confident they’re able to use their decoding skills when reading the word “lapin” and “sapin”.
2. The second reason for working with nonsense words is to offer decoding practice
In order for students to master decoding, as with anything else in life, they need to work on it.
Students need to exercise to get their decoding muscles going!
When you present students with a never-seen-before nonsense word and have them read it, they need to decode because they have no other way of “guessing” what the word is. There’s no context for clues, there’s no previous experience from seeing it in the past.
When (or how) NOT to use French nonsense words
If “les non-mots” are that amazing, shouldn’t you be using them ALL THE TIME?
The answer is no.
While they can be very useful in teaching students to decode/read, we shouldn’t overuse nonsense words.
The bulk of decoding practice should be done with real words, not “pseudo-mots”.
When working with nonsense words, make sure kids understand those aren’t real.
Depending on the grade level you teach, you might let students know why they’re working with nonsense words: so that they can read any unknown words they find in texts in the future.
Hope you’re now convinced and excited about using French nonsense words in your classroom!
You can create your own list of nonsense words in French, but if you’re looking to save time, check out this bundle of cards with French nonsense and real decodable words that are ready to print, with almost 1,400 cards.
It includes sets with CV words, CVC, CCV, CVCV, CCVC, and CVCC words.
There are transparent and non-transparent words, real and nonsense words.
Hope your students enjoy decoding words so they can learn to read better!
Thank you for stopping by.
Merci 😊
Lucy
READ: Simple French Writing Activity
CHECK OUT: French Phonics Resources
