Do Children Understand the Basic Relationship between Speech and Writing? The Mow—Motorcycle Test

Abstract

School children who have not yet attained moderate reading fluency were tested for their awareness of a fundamental relationship between our writing system and speech: that the sounds of speech are represented in writing. Children were shown a long and short word written on a card (e.g., mow and motorcycle), and asked which word corresponded to a spoken word (e.g., mow). The word choices were grossly different in length, so that a non-reader could perform perfectly if the relationship between written and spoken length was understood. Children were also asked about their basis for responding. Most inner-city kindergarteners in a reasonably representative sample did not perform well on this test. A majority of suburban kindergarteners and inner city first and second graders performed well, but many did not. Controls suggested that failure on this test cannot be attributed to the specific form of presentation of the materials or to misunderstanding of the question being asked.