The Three Cueing Systems and the Three-Cueing System

If you are against something, you should know something about that which you are against.

* This is an excerpt from my book, ‘Making Sense of the Science of Reading: Context Matters,’ published by Guilford Publishing

This chapter will define what the three cueing systems are and demonstrate how they work in the context of reading. The chapter that follows provides research to support the three-cueing system. To avoid confusion, I’ll use the term, the three cueing systems when referring to individual cueing systems of which there are three. I’ll use the term, the three-cueing system when referring to all of them working interactively and interdependently.

Making Sense

The brain is a sense-making organ (Mattson, 2014), not a sounding-out-words organ. It seeks to make sense of what it encounters, including the squiggle shapes on a page of text. During this sense-making process, it uses multiple sources of information. You’re doing it right now. You’re using your background knowledge to make sense of the information on the page. If you have a lot of background knowledge related to the things written here, it’s easier to make sense of this information. If you have a little background knowledge, it’s a bit more difficult. It probably makes little sense to you. We’ve established this in previous chapters.

Creating Meaning: What it’s Not

Let’s first understand what the three-cueing system isn’t:

1. It’s not a strategy to teach students.

2. It’s not a pedagogical strategy that teachers use.

3. It doesn’t exclude phonics instruction.

4. It doesn’t encourage children to use picture clues to figure out words.

5. It’s not an approach to teaching reading.

6. It’s not a method of “decoding” printed text.

7. It’s not a “staple of early reading instruction”.

8. It’s not whole language

9. It doesn’t exclude explicit and systematic instruction.

Creating Meaning: What it Is

Let’s now focus on what the three-cueing system is. Along with all background knowledge, your brain uses three systems to recognize the words on the page (Anderson, 2013, Hruby & Goswami, 2013; Strauss, 2011). These are the phonological system, the semantic system, and the syntactical system. They cue the brain as to what the next word might be. These are interacting systems, meaning that they don’t work in isolation (see Chapter 5). Rather, they interact and are interdependent. One system enhances the other.

As you encounter text, your brain processes semantic data, syntactic data, and phonological data simultaneously while utilizing the top-down flow of information to quickly recognize words. This is something your brain does naturally. It’s not something you teach. But you can include simple activities to enhance students’ ability to do what the brain naturally does.

Demonstrating the Three Cueing Systems

Again, the three systems work together to cue the brain as to what the next word might be are the semantic system, the syntactic system, and the phonological system. Below, I will demonstrate the existence of each.

Semantics

Semantic refers to meaning. When we read, we use the meaning found in the context of the sentence and background knowledge to cue our brain as to what a word might be. To demonstrate, here are two words that most likely make little sense to you: splammer and yobo-yobo. Let’s put them in context.

“I would like some more coffee. Would you splammer some coffee in my cup.”

The semantic information (context) in the sentence tells you splammer means to pour.

“Your hands are dirty. There’s dirt all over them. Please go to the bathroom and yobo-yobo them before you eat.”

The semantic information in this sentence tells you that yobo-yobo means to wash or clean.

There are four things to take from this:

1. Meaning does not reside in words alone.

2. In the real world, we never encounter a single word outside of a context (even signs and products have context).

3. Reading lists of words out of context is not a valid measure of anything (other than an un-understanding of reading).

4. Examining words in isolation should be a small part of reading instruction

Syntax

Syntax is grammar and word order. The passage below was taken from Lewis Carroll’s (1872) Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogovbes

And the mome raths outgrabe.”

Most would read this as gibberish and nonsense. However, using just syntax, there are things we can take from this passage.

1. It’s about a creature or creatures (slithy toves)

2. They did something (gyre and gimble)

3. They did this in a place (wabe)

4. There was a second thing (borogovbes)

5. There was more than one of the second thing

6. That second thing was something (mimsy)

7. There was a third thing (mome)

8. There was only one of the third thing.

9. The third thing did something (raths)

Ten of the 23 words in this text are nonsense words. The syntactic information from the other words enabled us to harvest nine bits of meaning from this seemingly meaningless passage.

Phonics

The phonological system refers to letter-sound relationships used to decode words during reading. The existence of the other two systems does not make this system irrelevant. Below, is a series of letters presented as you would encounter them if you were decoding this word letter-by-letter from left to right. I’m going to slow down time and get inside the head of my imaginary reader as the word is parsed.

s

“Ssss as in snake. Hmmm. This could be a whole bunch of words.”

st

“St as in stuck. Okay, this narrows it down just a little. It could be a whole bunch of /st/ words. Stun, stick, staple, stipulate, stop, stats…”

sta

“Sta. This is either a short /a/ sound, such as in status or a long /A/ sound, such as in stay. We’ve got the beginning /st/ blend plus either a long /A/ or a short /a/. But it could also be an /aw/ sound like in staunch.”

stam

“Stam as in stammer. It could be stammer, stamina, stamp, stamen, stamins, stamper, stamins …”

stamp

“Stamp! Of course, the word is stamp. Yes. I know what a stamp is. You either put it on an envelope or do it with your feet. Stamp.”

stampe

“Wait a minute. That doesn’t make any sense at all. What’s a stampe? Is it pronounced stamp-ee or stamp-eh or stamp-/i/? Is this a French word? I’ve never heard of a stampe before.”

stamped

“Of course. The word is stamped, like in ‘He stamped his feet’, or ‘It was a stamped envelope.’ It has to do with either feet or envelopes, and it’s in the past tense. We’ve almost solved the problem. If only I had the words before or after. This would enable me to determine if we’re talking about an action or a type of noun.”

stampede

“Oh! Stampede. Of course, it’s that thing that buffaloes do. I know what a stampede is. But what if there’s some sort of suffix attached to the end? It could be stampedes, stampeded, stampeder, or stampeders. All of these are related to the buffalo thing but have slightly different meanings.”

stampede

“Wonderful! There’s a space after the last letter! This helps. It means the word is related to a single incident or thing. But it could also be related to an event that occurred, sometimes occurs, may occur, or is occurring. Buffaloes sometimes stampede. The buffalo will stampede. It is a stampede of buffalo. It was a stampede. At this point, we know that it’s that thing that buffalo do. But not so fast. Yesterday I read on the Internet that other animals also stampede. It could be cattle, horses, elephants, sheep, pigs, goats, zebras, or even rhinoceroses.

The buffalo started to stampede.

“The complete sentence! That sure would have been helpful. Had I encountered the word in the context of the sentence, it would have saved me a lot of time. I’ve watched a bunch of old cowboy movies where buffalo stampeded. Buffalo would have acted as a primer to bring to consciousness buffalo things, like stampedes.”

All Together Now

Each of the three interacting systems has been isolated above. Let’s put them all together. The paragraph in Figure 12.1 has 110 words. Read it through as quickly as you can.

Figure 12.1. A paragraph about buffalo.

Billy was traveling from Minnesota to California. As he was driving through South Dakota, he stopped at a rest stop to stretch his legs and buy a can of pop. When he got out of his car, he saw a herd of buffalo off in the distance. He was very interested. Billy started walking toward the buffalo so that he could take a picture to send to his friend, Molly. Suddenly, there was a loud bang! Somebody at the rest stop had thrown a large firecracker into the air. The buffalo started to stampede toward Billy. Billy ran as fast as he could, jumped in his car, and drove away

The paragraph in Figure 12.2 has the same 110 words. Read it through as quickly as you can. Since you’ve already encountered these words, you should be able to read them faster this time.

Figure 12.2. Another paragraph about buffalo.

Away drove and car his in jumped could he as fast as ran Billy. Billy toward stampede to started buffalo the. Air the into firecracker large a thrown had stop rest the at somebody. Bang loud a was there suddenly. Molly friend his to send to picture a take could he that so buffalos the toward walking started Billy. Interested very was he. Distance the in off buffalo of herd a saw he car his of out got he when. Pop of can a buy and legs his stretch to stop rest a at stopped he Dakota South through driving was he as. California to Minnesota from traveling was Billy.

But you didn’t read it faster. If you had listened to the speech in your head as you read this, you most likely sounded like a struggling reader. You read it word by word in a very stilted and choppy manner. There was very little “expression” here. Why is that? If the three-cueing system were a hoax, as Emily Hanford insists it is, you’d be able to read the second paragraph as smoothly as the first. But in the second paragraph, the ability to use syntax and semantics was removed. You were left with only one cueing system, the phonological cueing system.

Conclusion

Now, do you see what you’re doing to children when we focus solely on the phonological cueing system? When you insist they “break the code” before they read real books, you are enhancing their ability to be less-able readers.