Research shows that nonsense wordplay can equip children with communication and coping skills, but should teachers embed nonsense beyond English lessons?
If you have ever read a Meg and Mog book with your class, you will know that the series, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is delightfully bonkers.
In Helen Nicoll and the late Jan Pienkowski’s brightly-hued pages, you’ll find the main character, Meg (a witch), accidentally changing her witch mates into mice on Halloween and leaving them like that until the following year. In Mog at the Zoo, the story ends with Meg, Mog and their friend Owl randomly having breakfast in a tree.
These books are just one example of how some of the best children’s literature revels in the absurd.
“A nonsense narrative is satisfying. The story structure [of Meg and Mog books] is similar to the way in which very young children write stories, and maybe that’s why they feel quite comfortable with it because it feels like something they might write themselves,” says Dr Maureen Farrell, a lecturer in the School of Education at Glasgow University, with expertise in children’s literature and literacy.
She says that the value of nonsense in learning should not be underestimated - and the benefits go far beyond the nonsense words that are used to assess decoding in phonics. Whole texts that incorporate nonsense (works by Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Dr Seuss and Spike Milligan to name a few) also have their place, as does the way in which very young children create nonsense words, worlds and characters in their play.
Farrell explains that such play can be beneficial to children in several ways: it can support their emotional development and their mental health, as it helps them to cope with stress.
Nonsense play is also important for language development, as it “gives children permission to play with language, and permission to play with structure and to be humorous,” she says.
The research behind nonsense wordplay
The work of Sophie Alcock demonstrates how some of these benefits play out. She is a former lecturer in education at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and has researched how children engage in nonsense wordplay.
“It’s a natural phase that a lot of children go through from about the age of 3 to 8 years old. When they’re playing with words, they’re coming to internalise the meaning of a word through playing with the meaning and the feeling of it,” says Alcock.
This can be empowering for children and a safe way to subvert rules and regulations, she argues. In a 2007 study, published in Early Years: An International Research Journal, Alcock observed children aged up to five-years-old in an early childhood education centre, analysing how they created meaning and interest during routine mealtimes.
“Using their imaginations, children negotiated and played with and within the rules around ‘eating-together’ times. While physically constrained in chairs around tables, children enjoyed the freedom of playing with words, sounds and meanings,” she says. They “actively, collaboratively and, at times, subversively” created their own “peer community culture,” through the use of nonsense words.
For example, when a fruit bowl was passed around a table during morning snack time, one child said: “Please pass the wee-wees.” This initiated a rhythmic chant in which the children took turns with requests such as:
“Please pass the trai-ain.”
“Please pass the fru-uit.”
“Please pass the lollypop/banana pop/orange pop/ice-block/pop pop.”
Alcock points out that this exchange culminates in “pleasurable party-like images”, which is exactly what we would expect many “well-formed” narratives to end on.
In the same study, she found that four-year-olds also frequently engaged in name play, making up wonderful alternative names for themselves. Here’s an example of an exchange among four-year-olds from the study, in which they build upon one another’s suggestions:
Sammy: “My name is called Andewope, I’m Andewope.”
Tom: “I’m Gwandelope.”
Sammy: “I’m Ropeerope.”
Tom: “I’m Hairyhair.”
Sammy: “I’m Photograph.”
Tom: “I’m Motograph.”
Anna: “And my name is Wupwupglee.”
In this exchange, the children create new words collaboratively, by building on one another’s suggestions.
While this might all seem like a bit of fun, Alcock suggests that the benefits of this nonsense wordplay could be far-reaching. She theorises that it may help to equip children with “important communicative and coping skills” that will go on to support them as “adults living in a complex world, increasingly faced with making complex choices”.
And there may be more immediate benefits in the classroom too: “It follows that playfulness may also be an important disposition for learning,” she explains.
How to incorporate nonsense into your lessons
So, while the children in Alcock’s study engaged in nonsense wordplay without adult intervention, is there scope for teachers to proactively incorporate nonsense into their lessons?
Stephanie Sharp, an English specialism lead at Reading University’s Institute of Education, believes that there is. She suggests that nonsense poetry, in particular, can be a really useful vehicle for this, but that some teachers lack confidence in teaching it.
“They might find [teaching poetry] nerve-racking. But I would urge teachers to get themselves out there and be brave with it,” she says. “Have a poet a week in your classroom. Investigate different types of poets, not just the standard canon.”
She adds that nonsense poetry can be used as a “gap filler” during the day. Teachers can use simple songs that incorporate nonsense words to accompany common classroom routines, such as tidying up or getting changed for PE, or have the class recite a nonsense poem on the walk to assembly.
“There are lots of pockets of time that can be used for poetry and the more children are exposed, the more used they are to having a go themselves, and the more confidence the teacher may have in being brave in trying new things. Having a go is good enough,” she says.
Farrell agrees that simple activities can be the most effective. She suggests that getting young children to illustrate nonsense rhymes is a great task for primary pupils: “Can you draw the beautiful pea green boat from The Owl and Pussycat? What does a Ning Nang Nong look like? Can you draw a picture of The Pobble Who Has No Toes?”
But dialling up the daft isn’t just for younger pupils, she adds; there is scope for older students to benefit too.
Farrell gives the classic example of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, which, she says, can be used to teach language, by looking at the parts of speech being expressed in the nonsense words. Take the line: “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”
“If you look at where and how the words are used in the sentence, students can see what kind of word they could use to replace the nonsense words in order to make the sentence make sense,” she explains. “So the students begin to see, for example, that ‘gyre’ and ‘gimble’ have to be verbs, so what could we replace them with? It result[s] in lots of different poems and the children [can] see how different verbs, adjectives, adverbs and nouns could have a major impact on the meaning of the poem.”
There is plenty of scope to draw on nonsense literature in class, then. But nonsense shouldn’t just be limited to English lessons, says Gemma Berg, a former primary school teacher who now runs Peekaboo Phonics, helping parents to support their children’s learning.
“When I was teaching, I used nonsense words in maths, particularly in key stage 1, in order to keep children engaged,” she says. “For example, if there were four pitpops and two fluflumps how many would there be in total? I would draw pictures to match the pseudo words and children would retain the information better as the words were silly... We would laugh about the words and use different voices for the new words.”
Ultimately, Sharp points out, the appeal of nonsense is all wrapped up in this sense of silliness and in the idea that “we can distort language”.
“We can surprise ourselves with how we break it apart and put it back together again,” she says.
It doesn’t matter what subject that language play happens in - what matters is that it is a shared experience, she continues. Creating opportunities to engage with nonsense as a group can, Sharp argues, “help with social bonding in the classroom”.
So, just as the children in Alcock’s study bonded over the exchange of nonsense words, evidence suggests that reading a nonsense narrative or engaging in silly wordplay can help to bring a class together, while having the additional benefit of supporting children’s development in some key areas.
“The fact that language can be constructed and deconstructed and undirected and playful will really enhance children’s cognitive and linguistic skills,” says Sharp.
And that sounds like a very good reason to revisit Meg and Mog or open up a book of Edward Lear.
Christina Quaine is a freelance journalist
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