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144
Annual Report of the London County Council, 1911.
There is a general relation between the accuracy of the result and the age of the child, but it
will be noted that the performance of the 15-year-old group is behind that of the 14-year-old. This
will be noted in several other tables, and gives evidence of the probable level of attainments of those
who leave for suitable work at the end of their 14th year, while the corresponding difference to be noted
between the 12 and 13 groups shows a level at which there are more returns to the ordinary elementary
school.
Writing was tested by transcription, dictation and spontaneous writing. In practice the dictation
was tried first as, if this succeeded, the transcription test was unnecessary. It is a common experience

The passage used for dictation varied in difficulty from "the cat was on the mat," to "two dogs
saw the cat on the wall," or, as extreme efforts in good readers, "the horse pulled the cart" and "the
cat caught the mouse."
It is impossible to do justice to the children's efforts by any description. Such efforts as the
following by 13-year-olds show the limits counted as mere errors in spelling.
"Toos dag" = two dogs; "the huse grue the cr" =the horse drew the cart; while both
"hte cat sro the bo" and "dok kat dn" are believed to mean " the cat saw the dog." Cikice dit
the cot and ma it nd" and "to gat leat the coi " are "the dog bit the cat on the tail"; "god cta
a om the nest" is the version given by a boy of nearly 14 in an older boys' school for "the dog saw
the cat was on the mat." It will be noted that many smaller words are often omitted; as mentioned
above this dictation was also used as a test of immediate memory.
Dictation reveals several defects which may perhaps be grouped as varieties of word blindness,
but their study might throw some light on educational methods. The lesser grades of defectives show
the influence of associations of sound and in some cases the methods employed for reading may have
been responsible for the inability to spell, in other cases associations of the word not the word itself
are used, as in the case of a 13-year-old, who wrote "obni" for box, A child may make
considerable progress in reading, but by the results of his dictation show that the letters have
little meaning to him. Sometimes even transcription is impossible; thus, a boy of 13 copied
"the cat sat on the box " as " c heghetscaanhtepz." He would seem to be attempting really to write
the words spontaneously from an ill-adjusted aural memory, or from the words as he read them silently,
the interpretation being c = a false start, hegh = the, ct = cat, sea = sat, an = on, hte = the, and
pz = box. Such cases as these need much individual attention to obtain results and really require
careful investigation in a way that can only be applied in some special observational centre rather than
in the schoolroom.

Under the heading spelling incorrect but intelligible are included such as "the bwhl is ylao"
= the ball is yellow, from a child who had been shown a yellow ball, the response looked for being
" ball"; while the unintelligible include the written responses of children shown the ink who wrote
"eonem" or "ther is haxse in the haxse pot."
Calculation was tested by counting objects, counting money, giving change, and by little sums.
In counting objects it appeared that 10 were unable to count four objects which should be done
by 5-year-olds, and 15 were unable to count thirteen objects, which should be done by 7-year-olds.
All these were under 11.