LINGUOSTYLISTIC TEXT ANALYSIS

TYPES OF READING

Reading and writing are two basic habits which make part and parcel of the modern style of life. It is hard to imagine any skilled work that does not require the abilities to read and to write which should be taught in such a way as to complement each other. Professional competence highly depends on one’s ability to read. Therefore, experience of reading is an essential part of education. Where there is little reading, there will be little learning.

In the existing classifications we can come across such terms denoting types of reading as: intensive / close reading, extensive reading, critical reading, narrow reading; surveying; skimming, scanning, etc.

Intensive / close reading is characterized by concentration on a special purpose and accurate interpretation of what we read. It is usually practiced in class with a great degree of guidance on the part of the teacher. Classroom instructions help students to develop efficient reading strategies: concentration on a passage-level semantic clues; formulation of hypothesis about the text before reading, then reading to confirm, refine, or reject the hypothesis; a tolerance for students’ inexactness and making mistakes.

Classroom work cannot substitute the process of reading itself, because people learn to read by reading. Hence, a student must do extensive reading as well. It is reading on a large scale over time, which the student does outside the classroom. Purposes may vary, among them content analysis, looking for relevant information, getting main ideas, overviewing essential points and details, etc. In most cases it does not require understanding every word.

Critical reading presupposes evaluation the manner of the theme treatment and the way of conveying the writer’s personal considerations about the problems raised, a critical judgement and appreciation of facts, arguments, and the style of a text. Critical reading is aimed at finding answers to the questions like these: Do I agree with the writer? Did he/she manage to persuade me? How deep was the author’s penetration into the complexities of the theme discussed?

Narrow reading is reading on a single topic or reading texts written by a certain author, which is more efficient for second language learning. During the process of narrow reading texts become easier to comprehend after the first two pages as far as the reader adjusts to repeated vocabulary of a particular topic and/or to the writer’s style.

Surveying is the strategy of previewing the content of a text and its organization based on references and non-text material. Surveying basically involves making a quick check of the informative extra-text categories: reference data –the title, the author, the table of contents, summaries; graphical data –diagrams, illustrations, and the like; typographical data – all features that help information to stand out including typefaces, spacing, enumeration, underlining, etc.

The term skimming designates glancing through a text to extract its gist or main points. Skimming, as a more text-oriented form of surveying, involves understanding which parts of the text contain important information and reading only those parts. For this reason the process of skimming requires knowledge of text structure. In particular, students should be able to learn about the text topic from the title and subheadings; they should know that the first and the last paragraphs often contain valuable background information, summarising, or concluding information; they should be aware of the role of topic sentences and where to find them. Eventually students should be introduced to different kinds of paragraphs (such as narrative, descriptive, defining, explanatory, etc.) in order to more clearly sense the pattern of the text, to recognize the relationship between main ideas and additional information taking into account lexical and grammatical indicators.

Scanning is a wide sweeping search for specific information rather than getting a general impression. Scanning demands that the reader should ignore all details but concentrate on looking for the key item. It is a useful strategy for data gathering, reviewing, using reference books, or judging whether the text contains material which is needed. Referring to this strategy, students must fix the reading purpose accurately, perhaps, formulating some questions before dealing with the text itself.

Teachers are to help advanced students to master different reading strategies, developing in class their reading proficiency rather than improving their linguistic competence.

VARIETIES OF WRITTEN TEXTS

It may be overwhelming to think about all the genres of written texts, but there are actually two main groups these texts can be categorized under. These two categories are nonfictionand fiction presented by four major literary forms: nonfiction prose, fiction prose, poetry, and drama. The form of a piece of writing is simply its structure, that is, how it is constructed and organized. Genres are specific styles of writing that make use of various literary forms as foundations from which it is possible to stretch out in many directions of expression. Forms and genres join with content to create the meaning of a concrete text; meaning is basically the writer’s message to the reader. Literary forms and genres affect the meaning of the texts they generate. No doubt, a poem about the tragedy of the Great Patriotic War would send a very different message than a history book.

Each genre performs its own function in communication and has particular features that make it distinguishable. It is necessary for learners to know which genre they are reading in order to know what to expect from the text based on a certain mode of writing, to understand the message it conveys, to notice when the author is playing with the reader’s expectations. However, the study of genres is not an exact science, for this reason the idea of genre is open to discussion.

The term nonfiction is applied to a vast variety of writing based on true or real-life events and experiences. Therefore, nonfiction can help people to understand the world around them. Nonfiction prose is literature that is written in ordinary, non-metrical language and communicates facts or opinions about reality. Every time you read a science textbook or a “how-to” article, you are reading nonfiction prose. Nonfiction meanings are usually pretty straightforward because the author’s primary purpose is to provide information, to analyse or explain facts and opinions, to persuade the reader to adopt a particular point of view.

English as a second language advanced students are sure to know many genres of nonfiction prose: biographies, autobiographies, history texts, science books, “how-to” manuals, dictionaries, encyclopedias, essays, “self-help” books, law volumes, newspaper articles, and pamphlets. We cannot meet all the existing genres within the scope of this course, but we will look at a few of the most common for the literary form in question.

Nonfiction embraces many various texts written like stories, but based on true events and people. All biographies and autobiographies belong to this subcategory; for illustration onecan mention Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life, Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe, Robert K. Massie’s Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Story of My Life by Helen Keller.

The essay is a typical example of nonfiction prose that also tells about real-life situations, persons, presents facts and/or opinions, but is not considered to be autobiographical (perhaps, with the exception of a personal essay telling about the author’s life). It is a short literary work that deals with a single subject; the key idea is to keep to one area of focus. An essay can inform, explain, persuade, or accomplish a number of other purposes. The essays aimed at imposing the author’s opinion on the reader and/or performing a “brain washing” function may be treated as belonging to the publicist functional style.

Fiction is a very broad term that encompasses a wide variety of written works. It can be anything the writer’s imagination can come up with and may range from a thousand-page novel to a two-line poem, each expressing insight into the author’s mind and moving readers in different ways. It can be a book about vampires, a story of a budding romance, or a wild adventure of childhood friends. From the complexity of Shakespeare’s sonnets to today’s modern novels that are turned into movies imaginative literature has always stood to reflect societies’ issues and emotions. It does not matter whether it is enjoyable, amusing, scary, adventurous, or romantic, in most cases it makes us think.

Fiction comprises all the texts portraying invented characters and/or events. The meaning of fictional works can stretch from obscure and difficult to clear and direct. Drawing a terminological parallel with the course of stylistics, it is possible to state that the function of fiction is aesthetic-and-cognitive as its notion coincides with that of belles-lettres style. It implies that fiction is supposed to give readers delight from its content and form. The indispensable characteristics of fiction are: genuine, not trite, imagery created by purely linguistic devices; the use of words in their contextual and frequently in more than one dictionary meaning; an individual selection of vocabulary that reflects the author’s personal treatment of things or phenomena he/she dwells on; the use of colloquial language which is in most cases stylised. Fiction that incorporates natural dialogue allows a deeper understanding for the audience.

The language used in the narrative or the description will differ depending on both the location and the time period in which it was written. Each slice of history possesses its own unique writing style, and even as centuries go by, fiction remains a tangible souvenir.

Fiction prose, being the product of the writer’s imagination, is written in ordinary, non-metrical language, as well as nonfiction. By means of dialogue and narrative or formulating characters’ personalities, it offers the reader a glimpse into another world. Whenever you visit a library, ordinary or electronic, you certainly notice that books are tagged as: mystery, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, horror, adventure, romance, or classics. All those are fiction prose genres; the author can get magnificently creative while building upon a foundation of commonly accepted and understood social conventions.

We engage with imaginative literature for pleasure and entertainment and fiction prose is written with this in mind. Most people enjoy the book that includes a personage whose personality or speech is remarkably similar to someone they know in real life or in which the protagonist thinks or feels in the same way they do.

Modern cinematic writing can also be considered as fiction prose, as it aids in the creation of original storylines and the portrayal of believable characters. While both are different forms of media, the set of methods used in a script and this in a novel are akin to each other. Filmmaking was influenced by the centuries of literature that came before it, so the two mediums of communication operate in a similar fashion.

Fiction prose is the most commonly produced and consumed commercial literary form and it is developing parallel to the natural speech and language of humans. It is generally recognized that the basic genres of fiction prose are: the short story, the novella, and the novel. Let us explore at some length each of these.

The short story has its origins in fables and myths, stories that were not sprawling epics but concise tales containing only a few characters and often a single focused message. According to Edgar Allan Poe, the author of the famous The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher, a short story is a piece of fiction that can be read in one sitting of about half an hour to about two hours. Short stories contain between 1,000 and 20,000 words and typically run no more than 25 or 30 pages. Because of their limited length, short stories are generally based on one major plot or storyline and a few characters. The students may have read and enjoyed stories by Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in particular, or by Edgar A. Poe himself. Writing in the 1840s, he marked the early stages of the development of the short story in the United States. It was not until after World War II that short stories grew in popularity and could be found in The New Yorker and other well-known magazines. Famous examples from this time include The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (1948), J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories (1953), and A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor (1955). Today, changes in both the book and magazine publishing industries have made short stories a bit of a specialised form, with fewer magazines publishing them and book publishers less likely to take a chance on a collection of stories than a novel.

Novellas are longer than short stories and tend to run about 20,000 to 50,000 words, usually between 60 and 120 pages. Because novellas have more room to work with, they usually have a more complex plot or storyline and more characters than short stories. The novella lies between the short story and the novel in terms of length and scope, but these are just general guidelines and there are always exceptions.

One can think of a novella in terms of some of the most remarkable English language examples: Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for ones. They are slimmer than the novels sold today. Different in their content, these novellas have plots that can be summed up succinctly; they deal with meaty topics and explore such serious themes as colonialism and savagery (Heart of Darkness) and returning to nature (The Call of the Wild).

A novel is a work of fiction prose that contains over 50,000 words or 120 pages. Novels are more complex than novellas, and they usually have more than one plot or storyline and many well-developed characters. The fiction sections in bookstores and libraries are full of novels, long and short. The books from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and S. Collins's Hunger Games series, for instance, are novels as many of the works by Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. Novels can be as long as their authors want them to be; there is no outer limit to their length. It is said that the longest novel ever written is a 17th century work that contains over two million words and more than 13,000 pages. Believe it or not, the book was very popular with the readers of its day.

From War and Peace to Harry Potter, novels are generally the works with lots of characters and complicated plots. The genre of novel gets the most attention these days, the current publishing standard is somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 words. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, and Animal Farm by George Orwell are all fine examples of fiction prose pieces. Many novels, such as Animal Farm, were written in allegory, formed to highlight and illustrate the societal climate in a way that was easily understood by the general populous. Fiction prose meets the human need to share information; its creative edge allows it to be passed down through generations.

For the most part, a piece of imaginative literature must contain certain components in order to be able to relate to readers. They are characters who are people or other actors moving along the plot and the events that occur. A story would be extremely boring if nothing ever happened to the characters. One of the most important elements that affects a work of fiction is the setting, understood as the context in which the story takes place which includes the time, the place, and the social environment. You can learn about settings, elements of the plot, types of narrative, characters and the ways of their charaterisation, the tone and mood of a fictional work from the remarkable textbook by L.V. Borisova Interpreting Fiction.

Poetry, on the contrary, uses metrical patterns with lots of rhythm and rhyme to create word pictures. Poetry employs different kinds of play on words, figurative language, and imagery to send its messages which are often rather obscure and need to be dug out with some effort on the part of the reader. The most common genres of poetry among the world audience are: epics, elegies, lyrics, sonnets, odes, and hymns. Epics are long poems that tell the action-packed stories of great heroes; elegies are thoughtful, sad poems that reflect on someone’s death; lyrics tend to be quite short poems and focus on the speaker’s emotions; sonnets are normally 14 lines long and follow strict patterns of rhyme; odes are formal poems that usually celebrate someone or something; hymns offer praise to God.

Drama is literature represented through performance. Though written in text, it is intended to be performed by actors on stage. Due to its performance-based nature, drama is more reliant on dialogue than other forms of literature. Drama joins monologues and dialogues by characters with stage directions and occasionally narrative sections that explain the action. A play can feature hidden meanings and messages that take some work to decipher. As a more collaborative art form, it must be interpreted by the director, acted out by actors, and viewed by an audience. Tragedies and comedies as the basic genres of drama can be compared by setting up such opposites as death and love, solitude and company, punishment and reward, etc. Tragedies are serious plays, usually depicting the downfall of the protagonist, the main personages of which are often superior to us in character or social standing. An ideal tragedy should contain three unities: that of time, because the play should not cover events longer than one day; that of space, hence the play should occur in one place; and that of action, which presupposes that the play should have one coherent major plotline. Comedy is a drama chiefly written to amuse its audience, with the characters mostly taken from everyday life and the plot usually ending happily.

UNERSTANDING MODES AND TYPES OF WRITING

It is essential to realize that authors make important decisions about how to present information in any piece of writing. Scholars and teachers are not unanimous in using and defining terms classifying the existing variety of written texts, moreover, the number of their types, styles, and genres does not coincide. Still, there are at least four most popular terms to designate the basic modes of writing and types of writing: narrative, descriptive, analytical, and argumentative. Modes of writing can be understood as rhetorical devices generating literary texts or text passages of the corresponding types of writing.

Taking into account the author’s purpose, one can subdivide texts into entertaining, expository, and persuasive. The author’s purpose is simply the reason for writing which stands out as primary: to entertain, to expose (to uncover / display / exhibit / illuminate something, to reveal an identity or a fact providing information by means of stating, instructing, drawing a mental picture and/or explaining), or to persuade.

Works created to entertain or amuse their readers are mostly works of imaginative literature. Fiction prose may also make important observations about human nature and the world we live in, but here the entertainment factor is leading.

A huge part of nonfiction texts is aimed at exposing an issue that the author believes is essential and necessary for the reader to understand. Informative texts give facts and state opinions; they are supposed to be clear, unbiased, and impersonal as an ideal news media article. In instructional texts such as “how-to” books, recipes, and instruction manuals, authors offer a series of steps to accomplish a specific task. In explanatory texts writers tell the readers how something works. An article about the discovery and use of electricity, for instance, may be full of explanations. In expository texts writers can also provide sensory details that allow the reader to form a mental picture of some person, place, thing, or phenomenon. An eye-witness account of a traffic accident or a personal essay about the author’s childhood are most likely to be presented in a descriptive mode of writing.

Authors frequently write to persuade the audience either to assent to a particular belief / opinion or to act in a particular way. Persuasive texts state the writer’s position, offer evidence to support that position, and invite the reader to adopt the position. Persuasive elements are found in various text genres: from advertisements to movie reviews and from academic arguments to political speeches.

Much of what we read can be identified as a narrative; the narrative mode of writing is characterised by its quality of telling events in the order in which they occur, that is, in their chronological sequence. Usually, narrative writing is associated with fiction which is based on imaginative events or stories that did not actually happen. The other category of written texts, known as nonfiction, is based on real facts and embraces newspaper and scholarly articles, essays, reports, and other genres of expository and persuasive writing. However, a certain part of nonfiction can in fact tell a story, but a true one with real people and events, which would classify it as narrative writing. Autobiographies and biographies are examples of nonfiction prose that belong to narrative writing, as they tell the real life story of a person.

In narrative writing understanding the chronological sequenceof eventsandideas is the most essential skill for good comprehension. It is easier to penetrate into the development of incidents and the development of a thought if we notice the sequences they follow and the words which signal these sequences: next, finally, before, first, second, when, later.

Authors are selective in presenting events and ideas in stories, essays, articles, and text passages; they are also selective when interrupting the chronological order of the writing to provide a flashback. It is an episode or idea that occurred earlier, in the past, inserted into the text or its fragment to illustrate a character’s trait or any point of development. The flashback helps readers to understand deeper an idea, event or a character’s personality; sequence words like remember, recall, and remind formally signal a flashback usage.

Recognizing who the narrator is and what facts he/she presents, one may sense explicit and/or implicit opinions the author shares. Statements which can be proven or disproven with direct evidence are considered to be facts; opinions represent a point of view and cannot be either proven or disproven. However, a writer has an opportunity to persuade readers to accept an opinion by presenting supporting facts. Learners will achieve a more complete level of comprehension identifying facts and following the sequence of ideas developed in the reading.

With facts and opinions in mind a skillful reader easily recognizes statements that express the author’s point of view and the author’s attitudes and/or feelings about people, places, events, and ideas. Identifying details in a narrative piece of writing is also helpful: a student has firstly to figure out where within the chronological order a specific detail should fall; then to look for the part of a true or invented story that holds the detail; and, finally, to skim this part through until the needed detail is found. On the basis of all skills mentioned above one can try to predict possible future actions.

Thus, to profoundly comprehend narrative writing students should be able to recognize the chronological sequence of events or ideas and flashbacks which are formally marked in text by certain signal words; to understand the author’spoint of view, his/herattitudes or feelings expressed by facts, opinions, and details; as well as to make logically grounded predictions.

Thedescriptive mode of writing is a rhetorical device using which the author resorts to details to paint a picture with the help of words. This device can produce various descriptions full of sensory details that involve seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting as the means of enhancing the reader’s comprehension skills.

Understanding descriptive writing requires that the learner should realize that the author organizes it by listing the characteristics of the subject – people, nature, places, events, and ideas. Recognizing these characteristics builds a solid base of literal comprehension. Understanding descriptive writing also relies on the reader’s ability to identify details used to depict a character, situation, or idea.

Authors employ a variety of techniques when they write descriptively. With people, objects, or ideas they can concentrate on a representative part or parts of the whole; with settings they show the scene spatially, usually moving in a logical direction around the area; with a situation they describe circumstances at each stage. Knowing that authors describe persons, objects, and ideas by listing their characteristic qualities, settings by listing their spatial characteristics, and situations by listing their stages strengthens students’ comprehension of literal ideas not only in descriptive, but also in other types of writing.

Realising that facts and opinions can also be employed to portray people, settings, situations, and ideas helps the reader to determine the author’s point of view about the subject of a descriptive passage. Detailed descriptions of people, settings, and circumstances may carry additional information which a skilful reader can draw from them. Recognizing such information helps to sense further ideas about the reading beyond what has been directly stated. Making logical assumptions about the characters, settings and situations broadens the reader’s understanding of essays, articles, and stories.

Knowing the peculiarities of the descriptive mode of writing will assist students in becoming not only better readers, but will also make their own texts more engaging for other people.

Employing the analytical mode of writing, authors present people, places, situations, and ideas by naming common characteristics and by describing how the subjects are similar or different with respect to each characteristic. Identifying similarities and differences between compared or contrasted subjects helps to recognize special characteristics of those subjects.

Recognizingcomparison/contrast signal words directs the reader’s attention to those comparisons and contrasts. Authors generally use such signal words as like, alike, both, and, similarly to show similarities; they use formal signals but, although, while, different, on the other hand to show differences.

One can come across several types of comparisons and contrasts in analytical writing: comparison or contrast of sequence, spatial comparison or contrast, comparison or contrast of characteristic parts. When authors compare or contrast two or more people, objects or ideas, they single out their common characteristics. When they compare or contrast two or more situations, events or processes, they are particular about the common steps or stages in each. And when they compare or contrast two or more places, they view the scenesspatially.

Identifying comparisons and contrasts in essays, articles, and stories provides a basis for literal comprehension. Students can build their understanding of analytical passages by recognizing the way the author approaches to comparing or contrasting the subjects. Recognizing the specific types of comparisons and contrasts helps to comprehend important ideas in any piece of writing that develops comparisons and contrasts.

Authors may refer to facts and opinions to express their views when they compare and contrast subjects. Writers usually describe people, places, situations, and ideas as they see them, in this way they demonstrate their own point of view. If authors describe only one aspect of the subject, they present a limited, one-sided description.

When students read narrative and descriptive writing, they must identify chronological sequences and descriptive lists. As they read a text or a text passage representing a different type of writing, they may continue using those skills. Recognizing the chronological ordering of ideas and descriptive listing of characteristics is also essential as students deal with analytical writing. Learners should also know how to make logical predictions about future actions and logical assumptions about the nature of the subjects when they read analytical texts.

Thus, identifying chronological ordering of ideas and descriptive listing of characteristics, recognizing the differences between facts and opinions, making assumptions and predictions are comprehension skills that are as important to analytical writing as they are to narrative and descriptive texts. Learners build their reading skills one upon another and they can apply each skill in a variety of situations.

Argumentative mode of writing produces argumentative texts and text passages. Using this mode the author presents a point of view, that is, takes a position or a stand on a topic and offers support for that position. Recognizing that the author first makes a statement and then offers support for the formulated position can help students to understandargumentative writing.

In daily situations we read passages that develop a listing of ideas, a chronological sequence, a comparison or contrast between two subjects. When students read descriptive, narrative, analytical, or argumentative writing they should also recognize the author’s use of facts and opinions to present a point of view. Understanding argumentative writing depends on the learners’ ability to recognize the author’s position on a topic and his/her use of facts and/or opinions to support that position.

Writers support their position statements by developing causes, effects, or a combination of both. Identifying causes and effects and distinguishing between them helps to comprehend the important ideas in essays, articles, stories, and text passages. Authors usually use words that signal the type of support they are presenting. Realising that authors signal that the causes of a position will be developed as part of an argument helps to focus on those causes; some frequently used signals are such as: several important reasons, factors, it leads to, because, one reason, since. Recognizing that the effects of a position will be developed as part of an argument helps to focus on those effects; some of the formal signals are: led to, as a result, effect, as a consequence.

When students identify the causes that support a position or the effects of that position, they refer to important facts and opinions in argumentative writing.  Recognizing that authors use facts and opinions to develop a point of view can help learners to understandargumentative passages in which authors support their positions with causes and/or effects, any of them may be a fact or an opinion. Distinguishing between facts and opinions is basic to understanding different types of writing.

Once readers can identify the causes and effects the author uses to support a position, they can understand the literal or stated ideas in the selection. Students should develop the understanding of places, situations, people, and ideas that the author intended them to have but did not state directly. Meanwhile, there are deeper meanings learners can draw from argumentative and other types of writing. Comprehending the development of an argument supported by causes and/or effects can help to come to conclusions about the subject in question. Being able to form conclusions that are logically drawn from stated facts broadens students’ understanding of the subjects in essays, articles, stories, and text passages.

Thus, a competent reader uses not one skill, but many, and can read at an observational speed of approximately 400–600 words per minute, recognize the precise meaning of familiar words and understand the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context without any reference to dictionaries, respond to lexical meanings of words and the relationships between them, decipher figurative meanings and trace emotional implications, see the relationship of the parts to the whole, understand the author’s intention. In the course of acquiring these skills the student also acquires knowledgethat enables him/her to widen individual vocabulary, to learn more about other times, places, and people.

DEVELOPING ANALYTICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE SKILLS

Sometimes readers think that they can approach a nonfiction text like a novel, understanding the information once and then moving on. But the best way to fully comprehend and retain the information covered in a textbook, news article, or scholarly journal article and the like is to follow these three steps:

1. Read the article or chapter through once, noting any words or phrases not understood and finding their definitions for clarification.

2. Read the article or chapter through a second time. This time, take notes, starting with the topic and writing the thesis or main point that the author makes in your own words. Beneath that, begin arranging the covered key concepts based on section titles, bold subheadings, or the main idea communicated through each paragraph. Under each section title or main idea, list important details related to that sub-topic.

3. Go back over the article or chapter, checking that you have noted all of the main ideas and key details. Then, summarize the main idea of each section in a word, phrase, or sentence.

Students who learn well using illustrations, diagrams, and charts can better understand and process information when it is arranged as a hierarchical model, a ranked structure. When readers are able to organize information from a text into a hierarchical structure, it shows that they understand the relationships between main ideas and supporting details.

Taking the time to really comprehend the text and put it into one’s own words greatly improves comprehension and retention. Developing habits as an active reader can seem time-consuming at first, but over time, it helps students automatically search for and identify the important concepts and key details, to understand the main idea of the text.

ANALYSING EXPOSITORY WRITING

Expository writing is not homogeneous as it can include essays, newspaper and magazine articles, instruction manuals, textbooks, encyclopedia articles and texts of other formats, so long as they seek to explain. Expository texts are fact-based documents mainly written to inform the reader. Nonfiction texts, such as news articles, scholarly journal articles, and readings from textbooks, are all considered expository texts.

When students read expository writing, they may need to understand a chronological sequence, a listing of descriptions, a comparison or contrast, the causes or effects of an event. However, learners cannot be a success in text work if they simply comprehend the content. They are expected to demonstrate their mastery of text material. To achieve this purpose, it is helpful to develop a system of locating the important ideas in a piece of writing, arranging them for the future recall.

For understanding text organization, students can look over a text by examining specific parts of it before starting to read. Previewing provides them with an understanding of the content, the purpose, the level of difficulty, and the structure of a text. Authors are doing their best to organize textbooks in a way that can help students to study.

The steps learners should follow when they begin to read a textbook are: looking at the number of pages, the pictures or charts, and the size of the print; glancing at the table of contents, chapter titles, or pages before they begin their assignments. By looking over certain parts of an assigned chapter, learners can have a better idea of what they are about to read and how they should approach reading it.

By now you have become aware of reading skills essential to understanding different types of writing: recognizing a sequence, listing, comparison-contrast, or cause-effect relationship between ideas; determining the use of fact, opinion, and point of view; making predictions, assumptions, and forming conclusions.

Authors of expository texts present their ideas by using different organizational structures, the basic among them are: listing, sequence or chronology, compare or contrast, problem and solution, cause and effect. Being able to identify the underlying structure of an expository text can help readers to focus on key concepts and relationships between important concepts, predict what is to come, and be more aware of what they understand as they read. As far as expository writing focuses on explaining or giving information, being able to find specific details in it is an essential skill.

In order to identify what type of organizational structure a reading selection has, learners first need to know the signal words used for each type of organizational structure. That way, when they read an expository text, they will be able to recognize those words or phrases, which serve as clues, alerting the reader to what type of structure is being used.

When the description structure is used, the main topic is introduced, and then attributes or specific details are included in the body paragraphs. The signal words used involve the senses: sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch. In the sequence or chronology structure, learners are to look for such signal words as: before, first, second, third, next, then, later, finally. When the compare/contrast structure is used, signal words and phrases include the following: different, in contrast, alike, same as, on the other hand, although, both, similarly, likewise, however, but, in comparison, in the same way, instead of. In the problem/solution structure, specific words or phrases to look for include: the problem is, one way to resolve it, difficulties, solved, one solution is to. The cause/effect organizational structure typically uses words like: for this reason, thus, since, as a result, consequently, may be, due to, this led to, because of.

Just aspreviewing helps to understand the important ideas in a chapter, so identifying the topic of what learners read helps them to understand its general subject. Identifying the topic helps students to focus on the general subject of a reading. A topic is the general subject of the items in a list, the sentences in a paragraph, or the paragraphs in a selection. Identifying the topic of what you are reading is the first step toward understanding subject information.

Understanding that the topic of a paragraph is the general subject of the ideas in that paragraph helps to direct the reader’s attention to the most important ideas. The topic is much like a title for the paragraph and is stated in a few words. Knowing the paragraph topic builds a base of comprehension from which to move to further understandings about expository readings such as textbook chapters.

Reading expository material requires good comprehension and study skills. For example, recognizing the topic provides a frame of reference for the subject students are reading about. That understanding can be built upon by identifying the main idea of a paragraph. The main idea is the general statement the author makes about the topic.

Identifying the topic and the main idea is the basis of understanding text paragraphs. A main idea sentence is the most general statement the author makes about the topic or subject of the paragraph. The main idea generally describes or covers the details in the paragraph.

Locating the main idea is essential for comprehension of expository material. Authors most frequently use the first sentence of the paragraph to state the main idea. However, they may place it in the middle, at the end, or leave it unstated. Comprehending subject matter depends on identifying the main idea.

You have learned that the topic is the subject of what you are reading and the main idea is the most general statement the author makes about the topic. Just as the main idea relates to the topic of the paragraph, it also relates to the details of the paragraph. Comprehension of important facts depends on the reader’s ability to understand the relationship between the main idea and details.

Details support the main idea sentence by illustrating or explaining it. Recognizing the main idea and the details in passages enables learners to focus on the important ideas that they will want to remember.

After the students have learned the basic comprehension skills necessary for understanding expository writing: previewing a chapter, determining the topic of a paragraph, locating the main idea sentence in a paragraph, and determining which details support the main idea sentence, they are at a critical stage. Now they need to move from the level of comprehending text material to the level of mastering ideas.

To prove to the teacher that they have mastered the course content, students need to make a step beyond comprehension: taking notes on the ideas they have selected as important. A great way to organize the details in any type of writing is tomake an outline. An outline is a general summary of the text, organized with minor ideas falling under major ones. The larger topics must stand out more than the smaller details. This way, when looking over the outline, learners can easily use the larger ideas to determine where the specific detail they are looking for might fall in the text.

Readers need to be actively engaged with text material by: identifying the main ideas of each section, clarifying confusing or unknown words or phrases, understanding the relationship between different concepts, summarizing information covered. Arranging ideas in an outline after reading will help to do this, and it will also create a study guide to help learners to remember the important information. A traditional outline with Roman numerals and capital or lowercase letters can be an effective way to organize ideas.

However, there is more than one ways to create an outline; outlines are tailored to fit specific students’ needs. Some of them prefer jotting down key sentences, while others prefer writing down short phrases or only key words. As long as the main ideas are listed in the order they are written about, with key details beneath each sub-section, then the important concepts can be summarized and the relevant information from the text can be understood and remembered.

MOULDERING INTERPRETATIVE SKILLS

Texts of different functional styles, belonging to fiction or non-fiction, require a bit different approach to their interpretation. Interpretation is a linguistic procedure which ensures the deciphering of all the information layers of a literary work. To interpret a text is to penetrate into the deep meaning of it, to consider it as a unity of content and form, to perceive the author’s vision and comprehension of reality, to understand its impact on the reader, to extract all the manifold information – informative, aesthetic, emotional, etc. In general, interpretation is a creative but to a great extent a subjective process. Both fiction and non-fiction prose can be interpreted from the pragmatic point of view. It implies that means of reasoning, persuasion, logical or/and emotional presentation of the author’s appeal to the reader should be assessed.

Works of fiction prose (no matter which overall topic or theme they are dealt with) possess a plot structure which may comprise the following elements: the exposition/the setting, the development of the theme or the conflict, the climax (the culminating point), and the denouement. There are, also, characters (major and minor) who may be presented directly or indirectly.[1] Fiction prose is written either as a first- or a third-personnarration, a certain atmosphere is always created in the work, and the writer always sends the reader an explicit or implicit message.

Different schemes and plans are recommended for the analysis of a concrete fiction or non-fiction text; some of them are overloaded with details. The essence of text interpretation is connected with the answers to the following questions, whatever the genre of the text under consideration is[2]:

– Who writes / speaks? What are his / her professional interests?

– What is the target audience: professionals, laymen or the general public?

– What is the author’s purpose / aim?

– What is said?

– How is it said?

– What is the theme / overall topic / main idea / message of the text / passage?

– What is the communicative effect?

– Has the author managed to fulfill his/her purpose / to achieve his/her aim?

To start with, learners are highly recommended to answer these questions in writing, because it is very helpful for developing necessary skills. The second step is editing the draft, making it more coherent, logical, and argumentative. Ideally, it should sound as a critical review.

DEVELOPINNG WRITING SKILLS

Writing is basically a process of communicating content on paper to an audience; communication will not occur if the writer has nothing to say. Learning to write, students should go through several stages of mastering elementary mechanics of written work (handwriting, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, word order, etc.). Only then they approach the stage where they become independent operators answering letters, writing minutes, annotations, critical reviews, or essays. The learner must have enough handwriting practice; there should be the widest possible range of kinds of writing: notes, summaries, commentaries, descriptions, arguments, magazine articles, reports, etc. To be a success in writing, students should know how to paraphrase, to compress the information gained and how to expand on it.

Writing is not an intuitive process: a highly effective strategy for helping students to develop and transfer writing knowledge is to increase their awareness about the genres they must write in.

The first stage in the writing process is prewriting, or activities done before starting a first draft. These activities in the prewriting stage are designed to help a learner to clarify his/her thoughts and make a plan for the first draft. Brainstorming and outlining are two popular forms of prewriting. Free writing, when students just write whatever comes to their mind, is a good brainstorming activity. In this way, learners can get some ideas down on paper without worrying about whether they are any good. Later, they can sort through what they have brainstormed and separate the good ideas from the not-good ones. Outlining is particularly useful for nonfiction pieces of prose. Students can use graphical means which help them to outline their main ideas and supporting details as they plan what to write.

The writing stage comes after prewriting and involves composing a first draft. During this stage, students may graphically organise their ideas on paper. For example, if students make an outline, they can use that outline to help to guide them as they write. Each main idea and its supporting details can serve as a new paragraph.

After the writing stage, learners move on to the revising stage of the writing process, whereby an author alters the substance of the writing piece by changing ideas or the order of ideas in the paper. For revising, collaborative activities often work well. For example, a teacher can pair his/her students and have them trade their papers and offer each other suggestions for revision. One student may point out where in the paper he/she experienced confusion, while another may point out how a certain paragraph would be better if it was moved to later in the piece.

PARAPHRASING AND SUMMARISING

Whether we are writing for the professional or for academic purposes, we will need to research and incorporate the writing of others into our own texts. Two unavoidable steps in that process are paraphrasing as changing somebody else’s language into our own and summarising, that is, getting rid of smaller details and leaving only the primary points. These steps are necessary for three reasons. First, if students use the original writer’s language without any changes, it limits their own learning. Second, the original authors did not write for the audiences you are targeting; there are inevitably content and language choices that will not necessarily work for your audience. Third, what authors write is considered to be their property; by copying it, you can be accused of plagiarism.

Paraphrasing is the art of expressing the meaning of a passage so as to make it clear. This means that the wording should be simpler than in the original. Simplicity and clarity are largely gained by splitting up long sentences and, if necessary, arranging the whole paragraph in another order. Methaphors, similies, personifications should be cut out or turned into ordinary statements. Exclamations should also be reduced to simple statements. This is best done by throwing the whole passage into the past tense and the third person, though there are cases (some expository texts, for one) where the past tense is inappropriate. Paraphrasing shows the teacher whether or not students have understood what they are reading.

In its proper use, paraphrasing is not reporting but exploration; thus, it can become training in intelligence and appreciation instead of being dull mechanical work. Apart from that, paraphrasing may be an exercise in good style, which in English means a simple style.

Paraphrasing is used to produce a summary of the content of a text under consideration. And in this way it turns into an original composition, written largely in one’s own words. A “stand-alone” summary is a summary produced to show a teacher that a student has read and understood the assigned material. Authors can also refer to summarizing when preparing a synopsis, a kind of index, or tables that usually stand at the beginning of a book to tell the reader what it is about.

There are several requirements to writing a good summary: the summary should cover the original as a whole; the material should be presented in a neutral fashion; the summary should be a condensed version of the material, presented in its author’s own words. Also, anything that does not appear in the original is not included; comments, interpretation or evaluation are not added, but the source itself should be clearly identified.

Start your summary with a clear identification of the type of work, title, author, and main point in the present tense. Example: In the feature article "Four Kinds of Reading," the author, Donald Hall, explains his opinion about different types of reading. Write using “summarizing language,” from time to time reminding the reader that this is a summary by using such phrases as: the article claims, the author suggests /says / believes / argues that, according to the author, in the author’s opinion, etc.

The heart of a summary is a completely logical, unbiased, unemotional reflection, in shorter form, of a text or whatever else is being summarised. It never is an opportunity to disagree or be upset with what is being summarised, nor to conveniently or even accidentally leave out something the author of the text might consider important. It is an image of the text it compresses, a smaller picture of the original reading.

In real life, being perfectly objective is impossible. And the goal of good summary writing is to put aside one’s own beliefs and feelings about a text and, to the possible extent, to write the summary as the author himself/herself would. At first glance people think summary writing is a simple skill. However, because a person must put aside his/her own prejudices and see with the eye, mind, and heart of the author, writing a good summary can be a sophisticated intellectual undertaking.

Summary writing has many uses at colleges, universities and in the professional world. In academic courses, it is useful for briefly describing the content of a text, speech, or similar activity or event. When students read a text and are supposed to write about it, they are expected to start their paper with a brief summary of it. A summary let the audience know what a person has read or observed; learners should convey material like this to their fellow students in a brief, easily understandable form. Strict accuracy in summarizing shows their commitment to fairness, balance, and reason – all of which are important academic qualities that improve a student’s ability to think and demonstrate this thinking to their teachers.

In the professional world, summary writing is also an essential skill. The summary writing skills of accuracy, brevity, and fairness are also important to companies and service organizations in business reports and proposals, case management, and other professional writings. Summaries of academic texts, court documents, business documents, people, places, and events are needed frequently, and some professional papers in science and in business, in particular, require abstracts which are simply a type of summary. Whichever you may need to do, learning to summarize fully and fairly will give you a reputation for being balanced, efficient, and accurate.

In addition, in their personal lives, people regularly summarize experiences when talking with others. Even in personal life, knowing how to offer a thorough, balanced, logical summary is quite helpful in understanding and explaining events to others and in knowing how to ask questions in order to get accurate summaries from others.

Some summaries, such as an abstract, may be so short that they are written as one long paragraph or possibly two. Another alternative is to have a brief two-three sentence introduction, a body section of one long paragraph, and, optionally, a final two-three sentence conclusion. A short,basic summary needs only a very brief introductory sentence or two and a very brief concluding sentence or two that do not stand alone in their own paragraph.

In summaries, we almost always should use the third-person pronouns: he, she, it, and they. You should not be used unless we are giving directions, or writing a diary or personal reflection, or a less formal magazine or newsletter article, or other specific advice.

A summary by its very nature should be as economical and efficiently short as possible. But summaries tend to be too choppy, because they are artificial constructs built up sentence by sentence. To avoid this read your summary aloud. As you read, mark the places that seem choppy, then change this choppiness by joining some sentences together so that you have a good mixture of short, medium, and long sentences.

WRITING AN ANNOTATION

An annotation is more than a brief summary of a book, article, or other publication. Its purpose is to describe the work in such a way that the reader can decide whether or not to read the work itself.

As students work with a text, they should consider all of the ways that they can connect with what they are reading. Here are some suggestions that will help you with writing annotations:

– Make connections to other texts you have read or seen (movies, news events, other books, stories, plays, songs, or poems).

- Draw a picture when a visual connection is appropriate.

- Re-write, paraphrase, or summarize a particularly difficult passage or moment.

- Make meaningful connections to your own life experiences.

- Describe a new perspective you may now have.

- Explain the historical context or traditions/social customs that are used in the passage.

- Offer an analysis or commentary of what is happening in the text.

- Point out and discuss literary techniques and/or stylistic devices that the author is using.

The following phrases can be adapted to fit your own annotation style and academic needs:

– The author effectively introduces the topic / question at issue / argument / problem by ...

– The writer organizes complex ideas, concepts, and information (provide examples) so that each new element builds on . . .

– In this sentence / paragraph / section, the writer develops the topic / argument / problem thoroughly by selecting the most significant and relevant facts (provide examples, such as extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information) appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic. . . .

– The writer uses appropriate and varied transitions and syntax to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships among complex ideas and concepts. . . .

– The writer uses precise language and domain-specific vocabulary (provide examples) to manage the complexity of the topic. . . .

– The author establishes and maintains a ________ style and ________tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the (identify a specific discipline) in which the he/she is writing. . . .

– The writer provides a concluding section that follows from  ________and supports the information or explanation . . .

– The author demonstrates good command of the conventions of standard written English .

In the annotation you need to assess the source’s strengths and weaknesses. You get to say why the source is interesting or helpful to you, or why it is not. In doing this, you should list what kind of and how much information is given; in short evaluate the source’s usefulness and its language.

WRITING A CRITICAL REVIEW

There are two kinds of critical review: an academic critical review and a professional critical review. A critical review is a formal discussion of the content, implications, and quality of an academic or professional text: a nonfiction book, essay, or article. Sometimes non-text materials, such as educational videos, are also evaluated using this formal model of reviewing. A critical review is a thorough discussion that uses a variety of critical-thinking tools, especially a logical, accurate summary; analysis of arguments, implications, and responses; and evaluative weighing of the quality of the writing, its organization and content.

Examples of critical reviews are most common in simple versions appearing in newspapers and magazines. Such reviews summarise the content of the text being reviewed, discuss various opinions or possible responses from the public, and evaluate how well the text has been developed. Examples of formal – academic or professional – reviews often can be found in the latter half of academic and professional journals and magazines. A formal review often discusses two, three, or more texts on a single subject at the same time, thus enabling the reviewer to compare and contrast several works.

Like a newspaper review, a professional or academic review summarizes the content of the works reviewed. However, in discussing opinions, it often does not worry as much about public opinions and responses but rather those of experts in the field. And in evaluating the quality of the works reviewed, the validity and method of research often is considered much more important than the quality of the writing.

The goal of writing a critical reviewis to help readers to decide whether to read or view a text. Summarising should give a thoughtful, unbiased account of what the work says. Opinions from the public or experts help readers to understand how the work might be perceived from several differing viewpoints; the evaluation of quality helps readers to decide whether the work is presented well. Most reviews follow this pattern by starting with summary and ending with evaluation, but there are not always clear-cut sections in the body.

However, if you wish to write a simple critical review with all of its major structural elements in it, you can simply develop your review in three body sections: summary of the work;