We use four main clues to get meaning from a text:
semantic (clues of meaning, derived mainly from context)
syntactic (grammatical clues)
phonic (clues from the sounds of the letters/graphemes)
graphic (visual clues)
Think about what effect these ‘clues’ may have on ESOL learners who are beginner readers.
Read through the ‘elements’ below (difficulties learners may experience) and drag each one to the correct ‘clue’.
Sort elements
• Culturally bound nature of meaning
• Limited vocabulary limits ability to guess meaning
• Lack of experience of genre
• Lack of experience of idiom or register
• Learner lacks innate knowledge of structure of language so cannot predict that the next word might be a verb, article, etc.
• Syntax likely to be different in learner's other languages
• Punctuation might be different in learner's other languages
• Beginner readers and writers of English will have no/limited familiarity with written syntax
• English is not phonetically regular
• Difficulty with homophones, e.g. there/their and homonyms, e.g. read/read
• May have sounds that don't exist/are different in their other languages (/p/b/, /b/v/, etc.)
• May have Roman script but the letters represent different sounds
• Learners not familiar with Roman script may not recognise different fonts, print, upper/lower case, layout, etc.
• If a learner has very low level of literacy in own language/is literate in a phonetically regular script, they may not have transferable skills in terms of pattern recognition
Semantic
Syntactic
Phonic
Graphic
Correct
Incorrect
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