READING
SKILLS
6.1 Introduction
Reading is the receptive
skill in the written mode. It can develop independently of listening and
speaking skills, but often develops along with them, especially in societies
with a highly-developed literary tradition. Reading can help build vocabulary that helps
listening comprehension at the later stages, particularly.
6.2 Micro-skills
Following are some of the
micro-skills involved in reading. The reader has to:
(1)
Decipher
the script. In an alphabetic system or a syllabary, this means establishing a
relationship between sounds and symbols. In a pictograph system, it means
associating the meaning of the words with written symbols.
(2)
Recognize
vocabulary.
(3)
Pick
out key words, such as those identifying topics and main ideas.
(4)
Figure
out the meaning of the words, including unfamiliar vocabulary, from the
(written) context.
(5)
Recognize
grammatical word classes: noun, adjective, etc.
(6)
Detect
sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, prepositions, etc.
(7)
Recognize
basic syntactic patterns.
(8)
Reconstruct
and infer situations, goals and participants.
(9)
Use
both knowledge of the world and lexical and grammatical cohesive devices to
make the foregoing inferences, predict outcomes, and infer links and
connections among the parts of the text.
(10)
Get
the main point or the most important information.
(11)
Distinguish
the main idea from supporting details.
(12)
Adjust
reading strategies to different reading purposes, such as skimming for main
ideas or studying in-depth.
6.2.1
Skimming and Scanning
Skimming and Scanning
are very important reading techniques. In short, skimming refers to
looking through material quickly to gather a general sense of the ideas,
information, or topic itself. When you skim, you read through an article
three to four times faster than when you read each word. Scanning refers
to reading through material to find specific information. When you scan,
you run your eyes over text or information to pull out specific words, phrases,
or data. For example:
Ÿ You quickly go
through a twenty-page report in a few minutes, and determine the overall
subject, tone, and a few key points. This is skimming.
Ÿ You pick up the
newspaper in the doctor's office, thumb through the first few pages, and gather
the gist of the events happening in the world. This is skimming.
Ÿ You flip through an
accounting report to find a particular set of data. This is scanning.
Ÿ You open the
classified section of a newspaper, find the automobile section, and then mark a
few cars within your price range. This is scanning.
Skimming
and scanning work in tandem. For English learners, both techniques should
always be encouraged because, with practice, students realize that every word
doesn't need to be read and fully understood. Good skimming and scanning
skills means that they will no longer be so strictly bound by the text, nor
their reading and comprehension speed. There are applications both inside
and outside the classroom.
In
the classroom, you may ask students to find specific key words in an article,
or answer questions for comprehension, or decide on the purpose of the
article. With students who must read and understand every word, the
opportunities for effective discussion becomes limited. The opportunity
to select more challenging articles also becomes limited, otherwise the entire
class may be spent on a line-by-line translation.
Outside
the classroom, students may look at bus timetables, job advertisements,
business reports, emails, and so on. A student will need to effectively
and quickly gather and synthesize the information, an impossible expectation if
he were to read each word. The sooner students become accustomed to,
develop, and improve their skimming and scanning skills, the better.
To summarize, the most important types of
reading as a skill can be defined as follows:
Skimming: reading rapidly for
the main topics
Scanning: reading rapidly to
find a specific piece of information
Extensive: reading a longer
text often for pleasure with emphasis on overall meaning
Intensive: reading a short text for detailed
information
Activity
London is the most populous city in Europe and dominates Britain
so it is the sensible place to start our short tour. All major government
offices and the majority of large companies have their headquarters here. It is
the seat of government and the centre of Britain's cultural life. All the
national newspapers, television and radio networks are established in London and it is where you
will find the majority of the great museums and art galleries. It is also the
centre of commerce and the hub of the nation's transport system. The
traditional commercial centre of this great city is The City of London, a
surprisingly small, central area with a population of over a million in the
daytime but fewer than 8000 in the evenings and weekends. The West End of
London is known mostly for its theatres, shops and clubs, the East
End for its traditional Cockney culture (but increasingly now a
major centre of the financial services and the Press). London
is nearly seven times larger than the country's next largest urban centre and
approximately 20% of the population of Britain lives in the Greater London
Area.
Surrounding
the outer suburbs of London
is an area known as ‘Commuterland'. This part of Southern
England is characterized by expensive housing and dense
populations. Millions of the inhabitants travel to Central
London to work and the towns and villages are virtually deserted
during the working day, only coming to life at weekends and in the evenings.
Increasingly, however, many companies are abandoning the high-rental offices
and industrial premises in London
and re-locating to this part of the country which saves traveling time and
money for their employees.
Further out from the
capital, Southern England has a more rural
character. Apart from the coast, which is well developed, the landscape is
surprisingly empty of major development. To the east, in Kent and parts of Sussex, there are farms growing
fruit and vegetables. Further south, between the great urban centre and the
coast, sheep farming dominates and there are large tracts of open land used for
both commercial farming and recreation. The South Downs,
an area of open upland, is the largest and most typical of these mixed-economy
areas.
The southern coast is
characterized by resort towns, many of which are popular with Londoners at the
weekends because they are less than two hours away and also as areas to which
to retire.
To the west of London, fruit vegetable
and sheep farming give way to cereals and cattle. The West Country is well
known as an agricultural and tourist area but there are also large ports such
as Bristol, which once dominated the Atlantic
trade with North and South America.
The coastline is
dominated by rugged cliffs and small bays and in the interior there are large
open tracts of countryside which are among the most popular tourist
destinations in Britain.
The area to the
north-east of London is also mostly open country
but without large ports such as Bristol
(although increasing trade with Europe has
made this area more important to the import-export industry). Again, this is a
popular tourist destination but, unlike the south and west, the area is
characterized by flat country and thousands of waterways, making it very
popular with boating enthusiasts. The main crops in this area are wheat, barley
and other cereal crops.
South, west and
north-east of London, then, the countryside is
characteristically rural but to the north-west of London
lies the traditional industrial heartland of Britain. Only one hundred miles
from London is Britain's
second city, Birmingham.
The area around Birmingham,
and especially further north, developed as the ‘Workshop of the World' during
the Industrial Revolution. Although industrial decline has seen much industry
close, this is still Britain's
most important centre of manufacturing industry. Apart from heavy industries,
such as mining, steel and engineering, there are centers producing pottery,
textiles and clothing.
Yet further north from this area of industrial activity lies the region of Northern England. Running up its centre are the Pennine Mountains,
popular with holiday makers and walkers as well as a being a famous
wool-producing centre, and to each side of these highlands lie great industrial
cities such as Leeds and Sheffield to the east and Liverpool
to the west.
Away from these areas the land is sparsely populated and much of the North West
of England is taken up with England's
largest National Park, the Lake District which
was home to the Romantic poets of the 19th Century as well as being the
favoured holiday destination for many of the inhabitants of the cities and towns.
The area is not
entirely industrial, however, and there are large areas of countryside as well
as attractive towns such as Stratford, with its Shakespearean connections,
Nottingham, which has successfully capitalized on connections with Robin Hood and,
of course, Oxford with its great universities, libraries and museums. As a
result, the area is increasingly important to the tourist industry and
continues to attract visitors from all over the world.
1. ‘Commuterland'
is
a. The area south of London
b. Places from which people travel to work
c. The areas close to the West end of London
d. The suburbs of London
2. Trade
with Europe has
a. Made some eastern ports more important
b. Made Bristol less important
c. Made some areas more popular with
tourists.
d. Made the North-East of London more important
3. The most
important sheep-farming areas are
a. The West, South and North
b. The South and West
c. The East and North.
d. The South and North
4. From
this text London
could be described as
a. Europe's
favourite city.
b. The most important media centre in Britain
c. The biggest and most important city in Europe
d. The centre of manufacturing and
transport.
5. The
‘Workshop of the World' was
a. The North of Britain
b. The name given to the most important
industrial areas.
c. Birmingham
and the surrounding areas.
d. The area between Birmingham
and London.
6. The
South coast is
a. A place where many Londoners go when
they are old.
b. An area of sheep farming.
c. An area of cliffs and bays
d. Flat, open sheep-farming country.
7. London is
a. A surprisingly small area.
b. Traditionally a Cockney city.
c. About seven times bigger than Birmingham.
d. An increasingly important newspaper
publishing area.
8. The Text
is Best Described as
a. a commercial guide to Britain
b. a general description of the English
regions.
c. a description of the most important
towns.
d. a short guide to Britain.
6.3 Previewing: Establishing Context,
Purpose, and Content
Before reading, you
need a sense of your own purpose for reading. Are you looking for background
information on a topic you know a little bit about already? Are you looking for
specific details and facts that you can marshal in support of an argument? Are
you trying to see how an author approaches her topic rhetorically? Knowing your
own purpose in reading will help you focus your attention on relevant aspects
of the text. Take a moment to reflect and clarify what your goal really is in
the reading you’re about to do.
In addition, before reading,
you can take steps to familiarize yourself with the background of the text, and
gain a useful overview of its content and structure. Seek information about the
context of the reading (the occasion—when and where it was published—and to
whom it’s addressed), its purpose (what the author is trying to establish,
either by explaining, arguing, analyzing, or narrating), and its general
content (what the overall subject matter is). Take a look for an abstract or an
author’s or editor’s note that may precede the article itself, and read any background
information that is available to you about the author, the occasion of the
writing, and its intended audience.
Once you have an
initial sense of the context, purpose, and content, glance through the text
itself, looking at the title and any subtitles and noting general ideas that
are tipped off by these cues. Continue flipping pages quickly and scanning
paragraphs, getting the gist of what material the text covers and how that
material is ordered. After looking over the text as a whole, read through the
introductory paragraph or section, recognizing that many authors will provide
an overview of their message as well as an explicit statement of their thesis
or main point in the opening portion of the text. Taking the background
information, the messages conveyed by the title, note or abstract, and the
information from the opening paragraph or section into account, you should be
able to proceed with a good hunch of the article’s direction.
6.3.1 The Process of Previewing
In the process of
previewing, there are two crucial aspects not to be overlooked. They are
described below briefly.
(1) Consider Your Purpose
(a) Are you looking for
information, main ideas, complete comprehension, or detailed analysis?
(b) How will you use this
text?
(2) Get an Overview of the Context, Purpose,
and Content of the Reading
(a) What
does the title mean?
(b) What
can you discover about the "when," "where," and "for
whom" of the article?
(c) What
does background or summary information provided by the author or editor predict
the text will do?
(d) What
chapter or unit does the text fit into?
Activity
Instructions
for learners: Scan the text
a.
Does
there seem to be a clear introduction and conclusion? Where?
b.
Are
the body sections marked? What does each seem to be about? What claims does the
author make at the beginnings and endings of sections?
c.
Are
there key words that are repeated or put in bold or italics?
d. What kinds of development and detail do
you notice? Does the text include statistics, tables, and pictures or is it
primarily prose? Do names of authors or characters get repeated frequently?
6.3.2 Reading:
Annotating a Text
Whatever your purposes are for reading a
particular piece, you have three objectives to meet as your read: to identify
the author’s most important points, to recognize how they fit together, and to
note how you respond to them. In a sense, you do the same thing as a reader
every day when you sort through directions, labels, advertisements, and other
sources of written information.
What’s different in
college is the complexity of the texts. Here you can’t depend on listening and
reading habits that get you through daily interactions. So you will probably
need to annotate the text, underlining or highlighting passages and making
written notes in the margins of texts to identify the most important ideas, the
main examples or details, and the things that trigger your own reactions.
Devise your own notation system. We describe a general system in a box close by
but offer it only as a suggestion. Keep in mind, though, that the more precise
your marks are and the more focused your notes and reactions, the easier it
will be to draw material from the text into your own writing. But be selective:
the unfortunate tendency is to underline (or highlight) too much of a text. The
shrewd reader will mark sparingly, keeping the focus on the truly important
elements of a writer’s ideas and his or her own reactions.
6.3.3 The
Process of Reading
& Annotating
A critical aspect
during reading any text is ‘recalling your purpose’, and can be explained in
the points given below.
(1) What are you looking
for?
(2) How will you use what
you find? Identify the weave of the text:
(3) Double underline the
author’s explanation of the main point(s) and jot "M.P." in the
margin. (Often, but not always, a writer will tell an engaged reader where the
text is going.)
(4) Underline each major
new claim that the author makes in developing the text and write "claim
1," "claim 2," and so on in the margin.
(5) Circle major point,
of transition from the obvious (subtitles) to the less obvious (phrases like
however, on the other hand, for example, and so on).
(6) Asterisk major pieces
of evidence like statistics or stories or argument note in the margin the kind
of evidence and its purpose, for example, "story that illustrates
claim."
(7) Write
"concl." in the margin at points where the writer draws major
conclusions. Locate passages and phrases that trigger reactions.
(8) Put a question mark
next to points that are unclear and note whether you need more information or
the author has been unclear or whether the passage just sounds unreasonable or
out-of-place.
(9) Put an exclamation
point next to passages that you react to strongly in agreement, disagreement,
or interest.
(10) Attach a post-it
note next to trigger passages and write a brief reaction as you read.
6.4 Reviewing:
Organizing, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Reacting
Having read through a
text and annotating it, your goal in reviewing it is to re-examine the content,
the structure, and the language of the article in more detail, in order to
confirm you sense of the author’s purpose and to evaluate how well they
achieved that purpose. When you review a piece of writing, you will often start
by examining the propositions (main points or claims) the writer lays out and
the support he or she provides for those propositions, noticing the order in
which these arguments and evidence are presented. Making an informal outline
that lists the main points, mapping out the essay, is one very effective way of
reviewing a text. Here a well marked text will really save you time.
As you work through
your review, you should also tune in to the rhetorical choices the author has
made, analyzing how the article is put together. Ask yourself what the writer
is actually claiming, and why she or he organized the piece in this way. What
does the introduction accomplish? What functions do the individual paragraphs
serve? What patterns of thinking does the author use to drive home the main
points? Your notes already tell you what the writer says; you’re now getting at
what the writing does. You will also want to make note of the tone and attitude
used to support and elaborate the writer’s view. Is the writer serious or
humorous? How can you tell? Does the writer seem to be offering only
information or stating an opinion and backing it up? How do you know? Keep
returning to the text for specific examples.
Finally, as you
review the text, sorting out its organization and analyzing its rhetorical
moves, evaluate the effectiveness of the text and the validity of the claims
and evidence. At this point you’re judging for yourself whether the initial
promise of the article has been kept and how the writer’s values stack up
against yours. To keep track of your ideas, use your journal: identify any
questions you have after this re-reading, and note any insights the reading has
provoked in you.
6.4.1 The
Process of Reviewing
As you review texts, let the
reading situation guide you. While each of the following strategies uncovers
one aspect of a text, you may decide not to work with all of them or to work in
this order. Also, don’t get caught up in finding the right answers to a
specific set of questions. There is almost always more than one way to sort out
a piece of writing.
Given below are some helpful tips to guide any reader to
organize and review any kind of text with an aim of comprehensive
understanding.
(1) Use the main point
and claims that you have identified to create a simple outline, and then put
the transitions and conclusions the writer makes in their place on the outline.
(2) Give a name to each
subsection and explain what writer "says" in the section and also
what the section "does" to advance the flow of the text.
(3) Write a paragraph
description of the overall pattern of the text. Feel the text.
(4) Write a paragraph
that explores the attitude of the writer. Is she or he being serious, humorous,
angry, ironic, informative, argumentative, combative.
(5) Skim through the text
and find evidence of the attitude you suspect. Analyze the text.
(6) Write on your outline
brief one or two sentence explanations of how each part of the text—claim or
pieces of evidence, transitions—connects to each other part.
(7) In a paragraph,
explain how each part accomplishes the writer’s purpose. Evaluate the text.
(8) In your journal,
review what you know about the author and the publication. Are they trustworthy
sources for the topic? Does the writer or publication have an obvious bias?
(9) Review the evidence
you noticed. Is there enough of it? Is each claim supported? Is the evidence
concrete, referring verifiable examples, statistics, and research?
(10)
Review
the claims the writer makes. Are they clear and logically coherent? Do they all relate to the topic? React to the
text.
(11)
List
the points that trigger a reaction in you.
(12)
Free
write a brief response to each trigger point. What reaction did you have on
your first reading? What do you need to better understand? What is interesting
to you?
Activity
To a philosopher, wisdom is not the
same as knowledge. Facts may be known in prodigious numbers without the knower
of them loving wisdom. Indeed, the person who possesses encyclopedic
information may actually have a genuine contempt for those who love and seek
wisdom. The philosopher is not content with a mere knowledge of facts. He
desires to integrate and evaluate facts, and to probe beneath the obvious to
the deeper orderliness behind the immediately given facts. Insight into the
hidden depths of reality, perspective on human life and nature in their
entirety, in the words of Plato, to be a spectator of time and existence-these
are the philosopher’s objectives. Too great an interest in the minutiae of
science, may, and often does, obscure these basic objectives.
Philosophers assume that the love of
wisdom is a natural endowment of the human being. Potentially every man is a
philosopher because in the depths of his being there is an intense ongoing to
fathom the mysteries of existence. This inner yearning expresses itself in
various ways prior to any actual study of philosophy as a technical branch of
human culture. Consequently every human being, in so far as he has ever been or
is a lover of wisdom, has, to that extent, a philosophy of life.
1. The
author indicates that a philosopher is a person who
a. Disregards facts
b. Loves wisdom
c. Desires technical knowledge
d. Collects all
types of data
2. The
passage suggests that the philosopher would probably be most opposed to
a. Quiz shows on television
b. College courses in philosophy
c. Courses in natural science
d. Sales of encyclopedias
6
.5 Comparing Texts
Texts are written for
different purposes, such as to persuade, to illustrate, to describe, to
entertain, or to analyze. Even though you may be presented with two or more
texts on a similar theme or topic, they will probably have different purposes.
For example, in a past NEAB
examination paper
two texts about Great White sharks were included. The first text was an extract
from a CD-ROM encyclopedia about this shark species and the second text was a
newspaper article about a South African man who runs a business in which you
can view sharks from the relative safety of an underwater cage. The purpose of
the encyclopedia entry was to inform the reader and describe the shark, but the
purpose of the article was to argue against cage diving and comment on the
impact of this activity on the town’s tourism industry. Clearly, the different
purposes of these texts would influence the way in which they were written,
whether or not they included any biased reporting and the features of any such
biased reporting, and the number of facts they contained in relation to
opinions.
Questions to ask when examining the
purpose of a text include:
Ÿ What is the writer trying to tell me?
Ÿ What
is the purpose of this text?
Ÿ What
type of text is this?
6.5.1 Comparing Presentation
(1) One way of identifying the purpose of a text is to look at
how it has been presented. An advertisement will generally be trying to
persuade you to buy a product or use a certain service and will therefore
feature writing that aims to persuade. An extract from a novel or short story
will be trying to amuse, entertain or describe – depending on its genre, while
a non-fiction book is more likely to be factual in nature with the purpose of
informing or analyzing. Newspaper articles differ in purpose – news stories
describe or explain events that have happened, whereas editorials discuss or
comment on events.
(2) Working out what type of text you are reading will help you
to establish the purpose of the text, and then look for features that are
associated with that purpose. For example, instructions might have sub-headings
and bullet points, a persuasive piece of writing would have carefully selected
facts and quotations, as well as words with positive connotations. Questions to
ask when comparing the presentation of texts include:
(a) What type of text is this?
(b) What features does a text like this normally employ to
fulfill its purpose?
(c) How do the features of the presentation
(e.g. headlines, pictures) help the writer to achieve his or her purpose?
6.5.2 Comparing Facts and Opinions
The purpose of the text will
influence how many facts are contained in relation to opinions. An extract from
an encyclopedia is more likely to contain facts than a short story — this is
because an encyclopedia’s primary purpose is to inform, explain or describe. An
editorial, on the other hand, is likely to contain mainly opinions, although
these may be based on facts that are presented in a news story elsewhere in the
paper. In advertisements, the facts that are given are carefully chosen to
present the product on offer in the best possible light, and to persuade the
reader to believe that the product is worth having.
Questions
to ask when comparing facts and opinions include:
Ÿ What
facts have been included in this text, and why?
Ÿ What
opinions have been included in this text, and why?
Ÿ Is
the author making it clear what his or her opinion is, and how is this done?
6.5.3 Comparing Information
The amount and type of
information given will depend on the purpose of the text. In the case of an
advertisement or persuasive political leaflet, sometimes only very little
information is given with a lot of persuasive devices which try to convince you
that this is something that you should believe or support. In other types of
texts, such as a pamphlet that explains how to do something or a travel guide,
a lot of information is given with far fewer persuasive features.
Questions
to ask when comparing information include:
Ÿ How
does the writer feel about the reader of the text?
Ÿ Why
has this information been given?
Ÿ What
is the writer’s purpose in giving this information?
6.5.4 Comparing Attitudes
Sometimes writers are
completely neutral towards their subject matter. For example, someone who
compiles reference books might not be passionate about the material he or she
is handling. But a person writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, a
politician devising a pamphlet full of propaganda or a satirist making fun of
recent events, are examples of writers who would feel quite strongly about the
subject they are covering in a way that would show in their writing.
As well as considering
whether the writer is neutral or passionate towards the subject matter, you
should also consider his or her attitude towards the reader. Is the writer patronizing?
(Does he or she write as if children were going to read the document?) Is the
writer convincing? (Does he or she present an impressive array of reasons that
would convince an intelligent reader?).
Questions
to ask when comparing the attitudes of writers:
·
How strongly does he or she feel about the subject?
·
How does he or she feel about the reader of the text?
6.6 Various
Texts: Text Types
Written
communication can be literary or non-literary; therefore, a text either belongs
to the fictional or the non-fictional text group. Especially within the
non-fictional text-group the problem of classification is still open to discussion.
Either one follows the concept that the major communicative functions of the
language provide categories for useful distinctions; or one takes the position
that 'the text types correlate with forms and ranges of human cognition'. These
are theoretical norms which in actual texts occur in manifold combinations and
individual shapes (i.e. text forms). According to the latter concept there are
five basic text types.
(1) Descriptive texts basically deal
with factual phenomena, e.g. objects and people. Therefore you find many verbs
of 'non-change' (e.g. to be, to stand, lie, sit etc.) and adverbs of place.
Technical description tends to be neutral, exact and impersonal, while
impressionistic description also gives expressions to the writer's feelings or
moods.
(2) Narrative texts types deal mainly
with changes in time, i.e. with actions and events. Typical text type markers
are verbs that denote 'change' as well as expressions of time (time-sequence
signals)); but adverbs of place are not excluded. Narration is to be found in
short stories, novels, biographies, anecdotes, diaries, news, stories and
reports.
(3) Expository texts tend to be
explanatory: they explain objects and ideas in their interrelations. Typical
verbs for the identification and explanation of objects and ideas are: to refer
to, be defined, be called, consists of, contain etc. If a relation to
previously mentioned facts and ideas is to be established, words like namely,
incidentally, for example, in other words, etc. are used. A similarity to
preceding phenomena can be expressed by similarly, also, too; additional
information can be indicated by words like in addition, above all, on top of it
all, etc. Typical of this text type are the expository essay, the definition,
the summary and the interpretative piece.
(4) Argumentative texts deal with
problems and controversial ideas. Reasons for or against some topic are put
forward. The ultimate aim is always to win the reader/audience round to the
author's side. There is a dominantly dialectical text structure, and words like
but, by contrast, however, yet, still, in any case, so, etc. are linguistic
signals of a contrastive text structure. But the basis of any argumentative
text form has to be provided by expository passages, by the explanation of facts,
concepts, developments or processes. While COMMENT tends to be subjective in
character, scientific argument seeks to be objective.
(5) Instructive texts tell the
reader/audience what to do. The instructive text type is based on the
action-demanding sentence. Commercial and political propaganda, directions,
regulations, rules etc. are typical examples because they aim at influencing
behavior.
Seeing the social
function, both procedure and explanation texts have the similarity in which
both describe how to make or done something. They give the detail description
on something, phenomena, goods, product case or problem.
To see the
differences between explanation and procedure, we have to analyze the dominant
language feature and how the texts are used.
Procedure, this text type is commonly called as instruction text. It uses
pattern of commend in building the structure. It use the “to infinitive verb”
which is omitted the “to”. It is a kind of instruction text which uses full
commend verb. Procedure is commonly used to describe how to make something
which is close to our daily activity. For example how to make a cup of tea, how
to make a good kite, etc is the best example of the procedure text. It is such
word; first boil water, secondly prepare the cup, and so on.
Explanation, it is
commonly used the passive voice in building the text. Explanation is such a
scientific written material. It describes how certain phenomenon or event
happen. How a tornado form, how tsunami works are the best example of explanation
text. It uses passive pattern in describing the topic.
In
addition to the main types of texts explained above, some other types of text
also include
- Reference
Texts: These texts list information, usually in
alphabetical order for easy use.
- Procedural
Texts: These texts give instructions. They tell you
how to do.
- Expository
Texts: These texts are non-fiction. The author wants
to recount an event, discuss or explain an idea, argue a point, persuade
you or describe something.
- Literary
texts: These tell a story or describe experiences.
The author narrates and uses language creatively.
Activity
Write down the gist
of the following passage:
Solar power is energy generated from the sun.
Many electronic devices, such as watches and calculators, can use the sun's
energy directly to provide the power they need. Light energy from the sun
changes the electrical conducting properties of the silicon crystals, and a
tiny electric current starts to flow. This system is called a solar cell.
Although solar cells used on earth do not provide much power, satellites in
space run on the same principle. They get many times more energy because they
are closer to the sun. In the future, workers in space may build huge power
stations from solar cells many kilometers wide. The electricity generated could
be beamed down as microwaves and then converted back into electricity. Most of
the solar power that we use today is based on a much simpler principle than the
silicon solar cell. Solar panels on the roofs of houses heat water directly for
bathing and central heating systems. The industrial version of the solar panel
is the solar furnace, in which huge, curved solar panels, together with a
system of mirrors, concentrate a large amount of solar energy onto a small area.
The heat energy makes steam for generating electricity. Solar power is clean,
renewable, non-polluting and does not damage the environment. It is potentially
one of the more important sources of energy in the world. A major disadvantage
of solar energy is that the amount of energy generated depends on the season,
the part of the world and the weather on a particular day. Another disadvantage
is that the raw materials for solar panels, such as glass and aluminium, are
quite expensive.
