Bev... Hmmm is right! I think our difficulties in untangling these systems just speaks to the importance of teaching to all six. We really do need them all... The deep structure systems help you predict a word you don't know or confirm a word decoded through phonics...but you also need to use the surface structure systems to access the deep structure...
I am thinking hard about your idea that semantics deals with sentence level and and pragmatics deals with the whole selection...wouldn't you use the pragmatic system to puzzle out a difficult section...rereading or chatting about it with a friend? But I get your point...semantics deals with a tinier piece than the pragmatic... Jennifer Palmer Reading Specialist, National Board Certified Teacher FLES- Lead the discovery, Live the learning, Love the adventure. Reading furnishes the mind only with the materials of knowledge. It is thinking that makes what we read ours. -John Locke From: Beverlee Paul Sent: Tue 5/20/2008 9:46 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Understand] pragmatic system was Lexical system For me, it's a relatively new idea about how much pragmatics and other deep structures do effect decoding. (And maybe I'm way off here.) I'll have to think of how to reply with more thought. For now, just let me contrast tall tales with another kind of writing. Because you know the humor, the exaggeration, and other characteristics of tall tales, you may be "expecting" to hear certain concepts (and even at a much less "aware" level) certain words, so you would be far more apt to decode them because, at varied levels, your schema would aid your "prediction/confirmation" strategies through the use of pragmatics. I guess I used to think that semantics and syntax were as "deep" of strategies as helped us to decode, but I'm revising that, I believe. I think the use of pragmatics relates to schema (without which, of course, decoding becomes an obstacle) and comprehension and monitoring understanding. It also has to do with register. Think, for a minute, of a writeup on the Living pages of your newspaper about a wedding. "And Mrs. Smythe poured." Now, had you been at weddings, you would know what "pouring" is and you'd hardly slow down as you were decoding that word. If you hadn't been to any punch bowl occasions, you wouldn't expect to see that word and you'd ratchet down to the sentence level for understanding. If the semantics and syntax didn't do it for you, you'd be forced to use "sounding out" or another decoding strategy. If you ponder this, you realize that semantics and pragmatics are more like comparing crabapples to apples than apples to oranges. And it's a tangled web to try to sort out where one ends and the other begins. But, for me, the semantics has to do with the sentence, maybe the paragraph, and pragmatics actually has to do with the whole selection. Hmmmm. More later. _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
