Plum Creek Literacy Festival 2013
Sectional: Dr. Vicki Anderson (9:00, 10:15)
Where East and West Shall Meet: Teaching Reading Strategies to ELL/ESL Readers
Reading is CONSTRUCTING MEANING FROM TEXT (of whole thoughts, not just individual words)
Cue systems used in reading to construct the meaning of the whole text:
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Graphophonic (visual information about orthography [spelling], knowledge of word sounds,
knowledge of phonics)
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Syntactic (how words go together; word functions [noun, verb, adjective, conjunction, etc.])
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Semantic (word meanings, phrase meanings, idiom meaning, etc..)
Reading strategies ALL readers need to learn (and especially ELLs):
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Sampling the text (so they know what is coming)
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Predicting (using the cue systems, from letter to word to phrase to sentence to whole text level)
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Inferring meaning (filling in knowledge by “educated guessing”)
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Confirming and Disconfirming (checking if predictions were accurate, if text makes sense)
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Integration (pulling info from all these strategies together to understand the meaning of the
Context Cues to Infer Meaning from Context:
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Reference (pronouns, demonstratives, definite articles, etc.)
Example: The ________ creaked high on the rooftop. That was the scariest sound he had ever heard.
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Contrast clues
Example: Unlike a __________, a human being cannot stay for a long time underwater.
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Punctuation
Example: The __________, who is my next-door neighbor, likes to come over for coffee and cake.
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Grouping
Example: Shrimp, oysters, and _____ are all susceptible to a deadly bacteria known as “Red Tide.”
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Restatement in the same or other clause
Example: The judge _______ ; that is, she asked the defendant if he had any other evidence to submit.
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Examples, illustrations, description
To incorporate all these strategies, try this three-step approach to a text:
Top-Down Approach:
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Generating questions from title or picture
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Activating vocabulary
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Skimming for content, based on questions generated
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Skimming for writer’s thesis
Bottom-Up Approach:
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Inferring meanings of words from context, looking up what is needed (vocabulary)
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Understanding word parts (prefixes, suffixes, roots)
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Understanding how language functions in context (idioms, grammar, etc.)
Schema Interactive Approach:
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Noting concepts of cohesion and coherence and connections between paragraphs
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Inferring text purpose overall and purpose at the paragraph level and determining author bias,
point of view, intended audience, etc.