Reading for a Purpose

In order to read efficiently you need to keep your goal in mind at all times. Always keep in mind why you are reading and what you hope to gain from it.

Factual texts inform the reader about a particular subject. They should provide helpful information and concentrate on facts.

News reports, interviews, recipes, historical records, instructions, FAQs are examples of factual texts.

The main features of instructional / procedural text can be listed as follows:

• The procedure is indicated in the title. e.g. How to…,
• Includes a list of resources and equipment,
• Process described step-by-step using bullet points, numbers etc.,
• Time connectives used to organise writing (first, next, then, finally etc.),
• Imperatives used,
• Diagrams / Illustrations used to support or replace text.

The characteristics of fairy tales are as follows:

• All of the events described in the fairy tale are a product of imagination.
• The time and place where the events are told is never clear.
• The heroes/heroines of the fairy tale are usually much stronger than humans.
• At the end of the event, the characters who always defend the good are rewarded, while the characters who are on the side of the evil are punished.

Articles are written to clarify the truth, to put forward thoughts and opinions on any subject, or to support or defend any phenomenon are called articles.

The following are the characteristics of anecdotes:

• Anecdotes are a kind of newspaper article.
• The author does not aim to prove his thoughts in the text.
• As in the essay, it is written in the style of chatting with the reader.

Critiques are written by people who examine the works of literature, art and thought both in terms of expression and the way the text is designed, and who offer ideas on this subject. They are the texts that try to tell people about the valuable or unworthy aspects, or successful or unsuccessful aspects of any work written/made in the field of literature or art in general.

The numerous sources of information about a term that you can discover in a dictionary are:

• Spelling of the words and its plural form
• Syllables of a word
• Whether the word is capitalised or has an abbreviation
• The pronunciation of a word
• Different meanings a word has, its synonyms (same meaning) and antonyms (opposite meaning)
• History of the word
• An example of a sentence/expression showing the right usage of the word
• Prefixes and suffixes and their meanings
• Different words that can be derived from the main word

User instructions of each dictionary take a different approach. As a result, the ideal approach is to read the introduction part and jot down how the details are organised. You will be well on your way to using the dictionary quickly after you understand the right alphabetical sequence.

Bilingual dictionaries are specialised dictionaries for translating from one language to another.

Definitions are provided in the same language as the entries in monolingual dictionaries.

The content of each paragraph is shaped by three factors:

1. Purpose: The reason the text is written.
2. Tone: The writer’s attitude toward the topic of the paragraph.
3. Audience: The person or group to whom the writer wishes to speak

The tone of a paragraph is the writer’s attitude toward the topic of the paragraph.  

A summary condenses a great amount of information into the most important details. You most likely summarise news, novels, and movies daily.

Academic analysis paragraphs usually breakdown documents rather than deconstructing compounds. A primary source (an essay, a book, an article, etc.) is dissected point by point in an analysis. It conveys the primary themes of the documents by studying individual points and determining how they relate to one another.

An academic synthesis paragraph takes the key ideas of one or more pieces of writing and connects them to form a new point that is not repeated in each work.

An evaluation often necessitates more critical thinking and a combination of summary, analysis, and synthesis abilities because it contains your point of view and grounds for your point of view.

The extent to which an individual or organisation is acknowledged as having expert knowledge in a topic is known as authority.

The five criteria to assess the quality of an internet source are: authority, accuracy, coverage, objectivity, and currency.