What does a reader have to know in order to read?

What are the language systems and subsystems at work?

 

 

Examples to illustrate the various language systems at work:

 

1.  Physiological Functions—scanning, fixating, saccadic movements, regressing

          Eye Movements (handout)

 

2.  Orthographic Knowledge—recognizing letters and letter combinations

          Shapes and letters ( A   a    a    a    a           th     )

              Legal Combinations (zbectn = not legal)

                   What can follow these letters at the beginning of a word?

                     r                                 l 

                     t

                     p

                     s

 

3.  Sound-Symbol Correspondence—phonemic awareness, phonics

            p      pan                             b   ban        

 

            a      pan        pain                   back           bake

 

            c      coat       city           

 

            ch    church

 

4.  Syntactic Knowledge—how words and sentences are put together

          tall         taller

          teach     teacher

 

          They go to the store.   But, he goes to the store.

 

          The man watched the dog.     The man will watch the dog.

 

          The dog watched the man.  But, the dog was watched by the man.    

 

          They will play their record after they record it.

 

5.  Semantic Knowledge—word meanings, vocabulary, lexicon

          Think of other words for: 

                 happy                         

                

                 sad

 

          Word families (meaning relationship)

                 act   react   reacting   reactor  

reaction   reactionary   reactivate   reactivation

 

                 sole   solo   desolate   solitude  

solitary   soliloquy   (Latin: sol = alone)

 

6.  Memory and Prior Knowledge—background knowledge, schemata

          (Schema Passage Example)