DIAGNOSTIC TEST OF WORD READING PROCESSES

Diagnostic Test of Word Reading Processes
However, reading soon becomes a major source of oral vocabulary development, and so
pupils start to come across written words whose meanings and pronunciations are not
already in their oral vocabulary. In these cases, developing lexical-semantic processes
involves:
• storing knowledge of the letter sequence of the written word
• inferring something of the word’s meaning from the context in which it occurs
• working out a pronunciation for the word from its letter sequence
• linking the letter sequence to the word’s meaning and pronunciation.
And, of course, unfamiliar words encountered in print may well be mispronounced: for
example, ‘misled’ may become ‘mizzled’, and give rise to a new verb ‘to mizzle’ (as
evidenced in the speech error ‘don’t mizzle me’).
Once the letter sequence of a previously unknown written word has been stored and
linked to its meaning and pronunciation, on subsequent encounters that written word
will be recognised immediately on sight. Instant recognition leads to automatic and
effortless recovery of the stored meaning and pronunciation. Lexical-semantic processing
is extraordinarily fast and operates without any conscious awareness on the part of the
skilled reader.
Lexical-semantic processes are involved in reading all words, both regular and exception. 4
However, they are uniquely tapped by Exception Word Reading, as Exception Word
Reading is only achieved through lexical-semantic processing. Therefore, Exception Word
Reading is used in this test as the measure of lexical-semantic processes.
Importantly, the sequence of operations in lexical-semantic processing is from stored letter
sequence to word meaning to word pronunciation. Thus, these processes allow us to
distinguish between homophones like ‘sail’ and ‘sale’, even when we read them without
any disambiguating context. The letter sequence ‘sail’ is linked to the meaning ‘an area of
fabric used to catch the wind and propel a boat over water’, whereas the letter sequence
‘sale’ is linked to the meaning ‘the exchange of goods, property or services for an agreed
sum of money or credit’.
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4
The only requirement is that words should be familiar to the reader. That is, they must have been previously encountered in print
sufficiently often for their letter sequences, meanings and pronunciations to have been stored. In skilled readers, one or two encounters
with a written word are sufficient. For beginner readers, many more encounters are needed: some young beginner readers fail to
recognise and understand written words that they have seen very many times previously (see, for example, Stuart et al., 2000).