Four cue systems & Teaching practices

The contexts in which we read (texts are structured within Social or Cultural contexts)

• Cultural context (Contextual knowledge) is important part of how we comprehend what we read.
• Social context is the reason why we read to serve a social purpose and to get things done.
• We use our reading skills differently with different types of texts
• The "Register"of a text describes the 
• Field (subject or topic involved may change the language used in the text); 
• Tenor (people involved & relationship - to communicate differently to different people); 
• Mode (type of language used -written, verbal, formal / colloquial).

The texts we read ( different social & Cultural contexts will affect the "Genre" a text is written in: example, an information report is different to a written  procedure.)

• readers must have grammatical & semantic information to read a text.  (includes word meaning and knowledge of the real world to replicate "Schematic meaning".  
• Effective readers select the right text: example, select a cook book to find a recipe, not the phone book. Internet is a new type of text evolved to fulfil a particular purpose in use language in a specific way. 

The knowledge we need in order to read (when reading we rely upon 4 sources of information or cue systems:

• Semantic information (knowledge about meanings; includes, topic information and vocabulary & answers the readers question "Does this make sense?") This is usually when a reader can stop and go back to re-read a passage in order to make sense.  They then usually apply either grammatical, phonological or visual knowledge to correct their earlier comprehension error.  

Why it is important to select the right text?  

• Consider asking a child with no prior computer experience to read and comprehend the following:

• "To move or delete buttons when the customize dialog box isn't open, hold down ALT and drag the button to a new location off the toolbar." 

• It just would not make sense in their world!

• Now, think about how we also use our grammatical and semantic knowledge to help decode text to make sense of the following:

• "We need to raed olny the frsit and lsat lteetrs of a wrod to wrok it out wehn we use our smenaitc and grmmtaacial knolgedwe ecftfeevily." 

• Grammatical information (knowledge - language and how it works)
• Allows the reader to predict what word might come next: Example, "I ____ the full length of the pool".
• "Cohesion" in text allows the reader to track meaning through the text: Example, "Peter looked at the lion.  It stood near him in the grass."  Him refers to Peter & it refers to lion.  Cohesive ties.  There are many examples including substitution (my ball is the brown one); ellipsis (leave out words,e.g.: Jim is tall and (he is) strong); conjunctions (linking words like and, then, subsequently; & related words (he is a liar and a thief).

• Phonological information (Knowledge - how sounds of language relate to printed text)
• describes links between sounds and letters
• helps readers to recognize whole words and work out how to pronounce new words
• also refers to concepts such as rhyme, syllables and onset and rime (bl-ack).
• "decoding from symbol to sound is at best difficult and at worst, impossible!" (Winch, Holliday, Johnston, March, Ljungdahl, 2010, p. 36)

• Visual information (knowledge - about the images used in a text).  Visual elements in text (includes electronic media) can:
• repeat written elements in another format to aid explanation
• add to what the print states
• provide essentially different information by depicting something not said in the print.

SUMMARY: FOUR CUE SYSTEMS

TEACHING & LEARNING STRATEGY: EFFECTIVE LITERACY PRACTICES