Successful reading requires the learner to apply three major strategies when dealing with a text. Teachers need to know how these strategies operate and how they can help their pupils to develop them. The three strategies involve the processing of semantic, syntactic and grapho-phonic cues within texts.

semantic cues:

• the reader uses context to work out meaning, i.e. applies knowledge of the world / subject / topic, knowledge of books and written language, uses picture clues, etc. to help work out meaning

syntactic cues:

• the reader uses knowledge of the grammar or structure of the language, i.e. the way words are combined together, to work out meaning

grapho-phonic cues:

• the reader uses knowledge of how written letters and words look and sound to work out meaning

Although the above word looks quite unfamiliar, a skilled reader of English will have little difficulty in reading it aloud accurately. This is because the reader is able to make use of the grapho-phonic cues of the word. He or she can look at the written form of the word (graphemes) and identify familiar letters and combinations of letters. The reader may then predict sounds which are suggested by the combinations of letters such as /z/ as in 'zoo', and long E as in 'see'. The reader may also compare this unfamiliar word with more familiar words that look quite similar, e.g. meet, feet and finally hypothesise that the whole word is read as /zi:t/.

Although the word can be read correctly, it is impossible to know what it means because there are no contextual or syntactical cues to help determine its meaning.

The second example shows the word within a sentence and the reader is now able to use syntactic cues to help work out the meaning of 'zeet'. By looking at the position of the word, (it occurs after the article 'the'), it is easy to work out that 'zeet' is a singular noun. The reader can also see that the subject of the sentence is 'Peter' and the object of the sentence is something that is going to be eaten. The reader can use this knowledge to hypothesise that 'zeet' is a type of food and may speculate that 'zeet' could mean apple, humburger, cake, sandwich, chicken, etc.

Although it is possible to have an idea of the type of word, and a general idea of its meaning, there are still not enough cues from this sentence to be able to determine exactly what 'zeet' means.

Peter is going to eat the zeet.

The picture provides further contextual cues which allow the reader to validate or invalidate the hypotheses made earlier. After processing all the available cues, the reader is finally able to come to the conclusion that the meaning of the word 'zeet' is cake.

In order for the reader to be able to read and understand the meaning of new words encountered in texts, he or she has to be able to recognise and process the three types of cues available in the text.

In terms of classroom learning, the teacher needs to ensure that her pupils are learning to apply all three types of strategies to the task of learning to read. If pupils only learn how to use one strategy in isolation they are likely to be slow in developing into effective independent readers.