How would you pronounce this word: Comparable?

If you asked a year nine student in any school across Australia today, there’s a 20 per cent chance they’ll get it wrong.

This year’s NAPLAN results have been released, revealing one in five Year nine students failed the writing test. The results also found 10 per cent failed to meet the minimum national standard for grammar and punctuation.

It has experts calling for urgent reforms in the classroom.

However, it has Ray Hadley calling for the correct pronunciation of the word ‘comparable’.

Today the organisation behind the NAPLAN testing, ACARA, spoke with the media to defend concerns around whether data from the online version and the pen-and-paper version of the tests were comparable.

The ACARA spokesperson, unfortunately, used the incorrect pronunciation of the word when discussing school children’s numeracy and literacy results.

This prompted Ray Hadley to double check the pronunciation.

Click PLAY below to listen to Ray’s full investigation

“Seeing as we’re talking about literacy… I checked the ABC pronunciation guides and then I went to the talking dictionary, of course, we’ve got the UK, and then in America,” says Ray.

After double checking, it seems the ACARA spokesperson may need to go back and check his own literacy skills.

“We’ll make sure that all the kids out there, all you teachers listening, and the mums of teachers and dads of teachers, that when they talk about that word spelt of course as if it was ‘compare-able’ it’s actually ‘comp-rable’…there you go, lesson ends today”.