Syntactic, or structural cues “...deal with the way words are put together into sentences following the rules of English” (Gonzalez & Author, 2020, p.70). A popular game show in America is called Wheel of Fortune. In this show, blank squares representing letters and words that combine to make popular phrases are projected onto a board. As contestants guess letters, those letters are revealed if they are contained in the puzzle. Game show contestants can win big prizes, however the viewing public loves to watch contestants and play along. Unknowingly, successfully playing the game utilizes understanding structure as a component of solving the unknown words. For example, if the first letter begins with “br” the participant unconsciously knows that the next letter cannot be a “z”. That combination does not occur in English. Similarly, if a phrase begins with the single letter word “I”, it is known that the next word will not be “me” or “up”. The English language does not use that combination of words. Young children come to school already subconsciously knowing these things because they understand how oral English language works. That understanding of English syntax supports them as they learn to read. It is an unconscious or invisible understanding (Author & Author, 2022).
Graphophonics refers to the visual information in a text. It is, however, more than just letters and sounds. For young children beginning to learn to read, it also includes information such as looking for recognizable chunks of large words when decoding. These larger chunks can include prefixes, suffixes, base words, larger letter combinations, syllables, etc. The brain is a pattern seeker. It looks for the largest known chunk of an unknown word, and then build upon that recognition. Let’s take, for example, the word methylchloroisothiazolinone. This is an ingredient listed on a bottle of shampoo. We assume it is unfamiliar to you. Think about what you do in trying to read it. Certainly, you did not try to sound it out letter by letter. Rather, you looked for larger meaningful parts of the word whenever possible. Perhaps your eye was first drawn to the word methyl. It is possible your brain related this part of the word to your known word methane. Perhaps, you realized it was similar to your cousin’s name Ethyl. After finding a part of the word that you recognized, you began adding other parts of the word based on larger chunks, such as syllables or affixes. This is your brain in action. It begins with something it recognizes, then looks for other meaningful parts.
The successful reader manipulates all three of these cueing systems simultaneously, at times seemingly without thought. Just as an orchestra blends multiple sounds into a beautiful piece of music, the reader blends the cueing systems into the reading process to make sense of the printed page in front of them.
Careful Text Selection
Clay (2016) reminds us to “Choose the new book very carefully for an individual child, keeping in mind his strengths and what might be challenging for him at this time” (p. 114). It is important that the teacher keeps in mind what the child will want to read or be motivated to read during the learning to read process. The teacher wants the child to be successful and enjoy the new reading while, at the same time, learning new things about how print works and how to apply that new information to novel texts to be read in the future. Gonzalez and Author (2020) further explain that the new text should not include too much new information so as not to overwhelm the young reader. They further state that whenever possible, the text should be culturally relevant and resemble the children sitting in the classroom.
The teacher’s careful text selection should also extend to ensure the text is structurally within the control of the novice reader. When teaching emergent bilinguals, consider that items in English, such as irregular verb tense and inflectional endings may occur differently in the child’s native language. For example, English utilizes many contractions. Some languages, such as