1) The document discusses how readers use graphophonic, semantic, and syntactic cues to comprehend texts, even when words are nonsense. 2) It provides an example of a nonsense sentence and has students visualize and discuss what they can comprehend from the sentence using their knowledge of real words and language structures. 3) Readers must use their knowledge of letters and sounds, word meanings, and grammar to interpret texts, even when words are made up.

1. The argle zoolked the bordiddy
in the ershant because the
bordiddy larped the argle.
Learning about the process of reading from a
nonsense sentence.
Write the sentence at the top
of your paper leaving space
for an illustration

2. Visualize the Meaning
 Draw a picture to illustrate the meaning of
this sentence to you.
 Don’t show your illustrations to each other
yet.
 Remember readers can visualize, or form
mental images of, what the words in the text
describe. Notice what difficulties you
encounter in visualizing for this sentence
made up of pseudowords.

3. Text to Class Connection Possibility
 “No text is self explanatory. In interpreting a
text, readers draw on their store of
knowledge about the topic of the text.
Readers use this prior knowledge to fill in
gaps in the message and to integrate the
different pieces of information in the
message. That is to say, readers “construct”
the meaning.” (pg. 9 in Becoming a Nation of
Readers, 1985)

4. We choral read the sentence.
 How did we know how to pronounce
nonsense words such as: argle, bordiddy,
ershant and larped?
 Did you sound out the words letter by letter?
 Did you use knowledge of real words to
pronounce the words?

5. Text – Class Connection
Phoneme Segmentation
 “How do readers go about learning new
words? In several ways. For example, if a
child failed to recognize clutched on a first
exposure, the teacher would remind the child
to break the word into parts: cl + utch + ed.”
(pg. 10 What makes a good teacher of
reading and writing, 2005)

6. Readers must successfully use three
cueing systems to read for meaning.
 To decode and understand the meaning of a
text, readers use information from many
interrelated systems. These systems provide
cues to make meaning clear.
 Graphophonic cues
 Semantic cues
 Syntactic cues

7. Reading calls for knowledge of
Graphophonic Cues
 Knowledge of letter-sound correspondences is sometimes
referred to as “graphophonic cues.”
 One permanent feature of a written word is the sequence of its
letters.
 The fact that sequence is a distinctive feature is apparent in
words like: tap, pat, apt.
 To teach the significance of letter sequence, some teachers
have children spell words when they are being taught. Name,
spell, and rename.
 Readers with more than a fourth grade reading ability make
almost no mistakes with regular pseudowords.

8. Reading calls for knowledge of
Syntactic Cues
 What part of speech is: argle, zoolked, bordiddy,
larped and ershant?
 How do you know?
 Syntax is the way words are put together in a
language to form phrases, clauses, or sentences.
 Syntactic cues are hints based on the order of words
that helps a reader comprehend.
 Syntactic cues are also known as: grammatical cues

9. Reading calls for knowledge of
Semantic Cues
Semantic cues are sources of help for words that
derive from the collective meanings of all the other
words.
For example, the meanings of certain words (run)
depend on the other words that surround them:
1. Can you run the store?
2. Can you run in the election?
3. Can you run in the race?
Semantic cues, unlike syntactic cues, are not confined
to the sentence.
1. “This room is hot. Turn on the ____________ .”

10. What is reading comprehension?
 Who zoolked the bordiddy?
 Why did the argle zoolk the bordiddy in the
ershant?
 What did the bordiddy do to the argle?

11. Compare your illustrations for the
sentence.
 What similarities are there?
 What are the differences?
 What did you comprehend?
 What were you unable to comprehend?
 Why interfered with reading comprehension?

12. Five Major Areas of Reading as they relate to
the cueing systems.
 Phonemic Awareness (Graphophonic Cues)
 Phonics (Graphophonic Cues)
 Fluency (All three cueing systems)
 Vocabulary (Syntactic & Semantic Cues)
 Comprehension (Syntactic & Semantic
Cues)

13. Marty is digging a hole for the tree.
 Draw a picture to illustrate the meaning
you’ve constructed for the sentence.
 Compare pictures: How are they similar and
how are they different?
 How did you use the three cueing systems to
construct meaning from the sentence?