Structural Analysis

I am going to write about Fox Ch. 6 this week because it intrigued me. Structural analysis comes so naturally to experienced readers and I would never think to explicitly teach it. It makes sense to teach it, but there are so many exceptions to the rules! I saw a lot of exceptions to rules in the section about Syllable Patterns. English is such a complicated language... Why make rules about spelling, grammar, anything when there are just going to be exceptions to every one of them? Every student learns these exceptions but some master them and some don't. I still am never sure if "i" really comes before "e" or not! There is so much to learn and remember when learning the English language. I think it really is a marvel that we all generally turn out ok.

Exceptions aside, I do think it is important to teach Structural Analysis. It give students clues to meaning when they are able to see base words or Greek and Latin roots in longer words. These same elements are also very helpful for younger students who are still working on sounding out words as they read. Compound words are a young reader's best friend! Even if the meaning of the whole word has nothing to do with the meaning of the separate words, those smaller words are still clues to pronunciation. Structural analysis is a more advanced reading strategy but definitely a very useful one.