Making connections in reading instruction

Reading instruction should make the following connections: (1) Phonic connections: to determine the pronunciation and meaning of unknown words by identifying letter combinations and spelling-pronunciation correspondences;  (2) Morphological connections:  to determine the meaning of unknown words by breaking them into roots, prefixes and suffixes, by identifying inflectional endings, compound words, contractions and possessives;  (3) Contextual connections =  such as the topic, words preceding and/or following the unfamiliar words and commonly used expressions, synonyms, antonyms, definitions, direct explanations, descriptions, examples, parenthesis …etc.; (4) Syntactic connections: to determine the meaning of unknown words by noting the inflectional endings, position of words in a sentence, mandatory agreement, and others;  (5) Text structure connections = paragraph topics and subtopics, text structure types and organizational clues;  (6) Inferential relationships, i.e. using knowledge or experiences or finding a semantic, grammatical or logical (causal) relation between the propositions, making backward and forward inferences;  (7) Anaphoric relationships, i.e., linking words and phrases that refer back to other words and phrases used earlier in a text;  (8) Cohesion connections, i.e. linking the component parts of a text together. (9) Connections with students’ prior knowledge and global culture.