CUEING SYSTEM

IN READING
 Read the following text aloud

The boys’ arrows were nearly gone so they sat down on

the grass and stopped hunting. Over at the edge of the
world, they saw Henry. To their surprise, he was making a
bow to a small girl who was coming down the road. She
had tears in her dress and tears in her eyes. She gave
Henry a note which he brought over to the group of young
hunters. Read to the boys, it caused great excitement. After
a minute but rapid examination of their weapons, they ran
down to the valley. Does were standing at the edge of the
lake, making an excellent target.
 The following errors may have occurred in your reading:

• You probably pronounced bow as it is pronounced when referring to

a hunting weapon. This would have been assumed from the context
of hunting.

• Mention of a little girl means that you were more likely to think of
her crying than of having a torn dress, which affected your
pronunciation and understanding of tears

• The past tense of reading is not often used at the beginning of

the sentence, thus your experience with word order and syntax
means that you very likely pronounced read in its present tense form.

• a minute of time is more common in text than minute meaning

“very small”, so you probably went with the time – associated
pronunciation.

• Does meaning “female deer” is far less common than the form of
do, particularly at the beginning of a sentence where a word flagging
a question is often located. Thus it is unlikely that the female
deer meaning was your first choice.
• It is often impossible to access all the necessary information
about word pronunciation and meaning by simply decoding. We
often need to see the word in context to decide both
pronunciation and meaning.

• Reading is not strictly a decoding exercise – background knowledge

and use of context clearly affect the reading process.
Cueing systems are sets of cues or clues built into
the structures and patterns of the English language.
Language is designed in systematic ways, ordered
in a particular way, to create meaning for
communication.
When children are taught to recognize and use these
relatively predictable language patterns within text,
they have the means to become independent readers
and writers.
 THE FOUR READING
CUEING SYSTEMS
• Meaning (Semantic) Cue
• Structure (Syntactic) Cue
• Visual (Graphophonic) cue
•Pragmatic (Social ) cue
 Pragmatics
Syntax
Does it sound right?

Semantics Graphophonics
Does it make sense? Does it look right?
 M EA N IN G ( S EM A N T I C C U E S )

• Vocabulary is the key component of this system.

• Relationships between words and ideas or meaning
• Readers construct meaning as they relate information
to what they know.
• Readers use their background knowledge, meaning
contained in the illustrations, and meaning contained
in the words and their relationship.

Eg:
Text: The house had four bedrooms.
Child: The horse had four bedrooms.
Ask: Does it make sense?
 THE TEACHER MAY
 Extend students ‘background experiences an involve them in as many real life
experiences as possible.
 Discuss experiences to extend students’ understanding and related vocabulary.
 Encourage extensive independent reading.
 Before reading, have students recall and share what they know about the topic.
 Encourage prediction before and during reading to encourage reading for
meaning.
 Help students clarify and extend understanding by having them respond to
reading in a variety of ways: writing, discussion or drawing.
 Help students learn to use the semantic cueing system by teaching them to ask
themselves as they read: What would make sense here? Did that make sense?
 Use oral and written cloze activities, focusing on meaning to predict and
confirm.
 Read as many books as possible
 STRUCTURE (SYNTACTIC)
CUES
• Is the structural organization of English. The system regulates how
words are combined into sentences; how words are formed; how
punctuations work; In other words, it is the rule that governs the
language pattern.
E.g. Word order, subject-verb agreement, tenses, punctuations, word
functions, word endings. etc.
Example:
Text: The goat ate four shoes.
Child: The goat eated four shoes.

Does it sound right?

 THE TEACHER MAY

• read to students from a variety of literature.

• provide time and opportunity for students to read independently.
• provide literature with repeated syntactic and semantic patterns.
• provide opportunities for students to use language for different purposes—
to tell stories, to explain, to ask questions, to give directions.
• Use oral and written cloze activities, focusing on syntactic patterns to
predict and confirm/self correct.
• Demonstrate through oral reading how to use syntactic cues to predict and
recognize miscues. (Have students listen for parts of the passage that
doesn’t sound right so that they can develop an awareness of what the term
actually means.)
• encourage students to use the read ahead strategy.
 VISUAL (GRAPHOPHONIC) CUES

Refers to the sound-symbol system and how readers

apply this knowledge as they read.
It also includes knowledge about directionality and
spacing of words.
Confirm predictions made based on semantics and
syntax.
Eg:
Text: He jumped over the gate.
Child: He jumped over the fence.

Does it look right?

 THE TEACHER MAY

• Provide many opportunities for students to play with words in oral language
to support the development of phonological awareness.
• Provide extensive experiences with rhyme in contexts such as shared
reading, read aloud, and rhyming games so that students can develop the
ability to recognize and generate rhymes automatically.
• Clapping the syllables in a word; listening for the secret word (saying the
word syllable by syllable and having students guess the word.
• Helping students to segment rhyming words at the rime/onset boundary.
• Clapping the individual phonemes in a word.
• Introduce word-symbol relationship in context through poem, rhyme, or
book to students.
Pragmatic Knowledge
When learners understand that people use language differently
in different contexts, they are drawing upon pragmatic
knowledge. For example, children might notice that adults talk
differently to a baby than to another adult. English as a Second
Dialect speakers might notice that the language spoken by
teachers at schools is different than the language spoken by
members of their families even though both are speaking
English.
 TIPS:

• To figure what cue the child is using is to ask oneself

‘what made the child say that?’
• Get them to use all 3 cueing system working at the same
time.
• Remind them that reading should sound as if we are
talking to one another.
P R O M P T S U S E D TO A C T I VAT E T H E T H R E E C U E I N G S Y S T E M S

Semantics (Meaning Cues)

Predict: Look at the picture.
Skip the word and come back to it.
What would make sense?
Make a meaningful substitution.
Confirm: Did it make sense?
How do you know?
Syntactic (Grammar Cues)
Predict: Take a running start.
What kind of word would you expect it to be?
Make a meaningful substitution.
Confirm: Did it sound right?
How do you know?
Graphophonics (Visual cues)
Predict: Get your mouth ready to say the word.
Sound it out.
Break the word into parts.
Look for little words in the big word.

Confirm: Did it look right?

How did you know?
THANK YOU