The Four Cueing Systems Semantic Graphophonic Syntactic Pragmatic

The Four Cueing Systems Readers use all four cueing systems to make sense of what they are reading Cueing systems work together to help the reader comprehend text Depending on the text, the reader may rely more heavily on one cueing system than another.

Semantic Cueing System The semantic cueing system involves using clues in the text to determine the meaning of an unknown word. Within word clues, such as prefixes or suffixes Other words in the sentence Other words in the paragraph or whole text Picture or graphic clues

Graphophonic Cueing System The graphophonic cueing system helps readers to sound out unknown words. If the word is already in the reader’s oral vocabulary, she can sound out the word and attach meaning to it. If the word is not in the reader’s oral vocabulary, she may be able to sound out the word but not know the meaning.

Syntactic Cueing System The syntactic cueing system gives the reader clues from the sentence structure. We can predict what type of word will come next in a sentence from our knowledge of the English sentence structure. Ex. The boy rode the ______ bike. (Based on our knowledge of English, we know that an adjective must go in the blank. This is a syntactic clue.)

Pragmatic Cueing System Based on the reader’s background and the context of the reading, the reader has certain expectations for the text. For example, you expect text in this class to be related to reading. When background knowledge is lacking on the topic, this cueing system may be weak for that text. When the reader’s cultural background is different from the author’s, he may have trouble using this cueing system because expectations are different.

Using the Cueing Systems Together Effective readers use all the cueing systems together to construct meaning from text. Ex. Example: The boy climbed the __________. Semantic Cue: It has to be something you can climb. Pragmatic Cue: There are only certain things we climb—ladders, trees, mountains Syntactic Cue: If there is only one word that goes in the blank, it has to be a noun, a thing Graphophonic Cue: There are no graphophonic cues but if I told you the word began with a “t”, that would narrow the possibilities down even more.

Checking for Understanding Identify the main types of cues each of the following readers is using. The word in the parenthesis indicates the correct word in the text. 1. The family was getting larger so they bought a new horse (house). 2. The child seat (sat) down. 3. The snake climbed (slithered) up the tree. 4. She planted (planned) the garden. 5.We needed more food so we went to the moon (store).