Karencita

STEP BY STEP WITH ACADEMIC TEXTS

2006-02-02T11:31:00.000-04:00

HOW TO ANALIZE TEXTS

Step 1: Survey the Text: scan the text and note the general purpose of the text.
Step 2: Identify the Signal Words: circle transition words in the text. Some readers may prefer to highlight photocopied pages of text or attach “sticky” notes to help them locate the transition words; or, maybe, simply generate a list. Whatever the vehicle,students need to identify the signal words present in the text.
Step 3: Identify the Structure of the Text: think of what the main structure of the text may be (cause and effect, compare and contrast, description, problem and solution, and sequence or chronological order). They would ask themselves: “What kind of thinking will be necessary to understand the information in the text? and “How would I best display the information after reading?”
Step 4: Predict the Main Idea of the Passage: Using what you know about the signal words and the structure of the text, write a sentence stating what you think the main idea of this passage may be.
Step 5: Read the Text.
Step 6: Revisit the Main Idea Prediction: after reading, go back to your prediction of the main idea of the passage. You may then use a graphic organizer to display the information, write a summary, or in some other way organize what you have read.

HOW TO IDENTIFY THE MAIN IDEA

Step 1:Read the entire paragraph to get an idea of what the paragraph is about. You may find it helpful to whisper the words as you read or to form a picture in your mind of what you are reading. Once you have a general idea of what the paragraph is about, go on to the next step.
Step 2: Examine each sentence in the paragraph to identify the important words that tell what the sentence is about. Ignore the words that are not needed to tell what the sentence is about. If you are allowed to, draw a line through the words to be ignored. For each sentence, write on a sheet of paper the words that tell what the sentence is about.
Step 3: Reread the words you wrote for each sentence in the paragraph. Decide which sentence contains the words you wrote that best describe the main idea of the paragraph. These words are the main idea of the paragraph. The sentence that contains these words is the topic sentence. The other words you wrote are the supporting details for the main idea.
Step 4: Write the main idea for each paragraph in your notebook. This will provide you with a written record of the most important ideas you learned. This written record will be helpful if you have to take a test that covers the reading assignment.

HOW TO PARAPHRASE

Step 1: Understand what you are reading. If you don't understand it, you can't paraphrase it correctly. That's guaranteed.
Step 2: Think about the ideas, especially how the ideas may relate to your specific topic.
Step 3: Not looking at the original, write down the ideas.
Step 4: Look back at the original to see if you have changed the grammar and vocabulary. If not, change them now.

HOW TO SUMMARIZE

Step 1.Prewriting:Read the article quickly.Try to get a sense of the article's general focus and content.
Step 2. Drafting:Restate the article's thesis simply and in your own words. Restate each paragraph's topic simply and in your own words.
Step 3.Revising: Combine sentences in Step Two to form your summary; organize your summary sentences in the same order as the main ideas in the original text. Edit very carefully for neatness and correctness.

SUMMARIZE & PARAPHRASE, IMPORTANT TOOLS FOR STUDENTS

2006-02-02T10:41:00.000-04:00

Paraphrase and Summaize are two main tools for acquiring meaningful knowledge and doing academic research. But actually, there are a lot of students who do not serve themselves from these useful skills because they do not even know how to put them in practice. For those who know what are this tools, we finally understood the importance of their usage. Paraphrasing, for example, is very useful because we read a text and then rewrite about it in word that are more understandable for us. In that way, If we use our own words when reading a text we will get a meaningful undestanding about what we need to focus our atention to for later homeworks. Also, it is very profitable when we need to do our Final Paper for avoiding any kind of plagiarisms. On the other hand, Summarizing is very useful because we can get easily the information we have already read. If we summarize correctly we will be able to get the whole information and the main ideas of a text (or whateve we want to summarize) without reading big amounts of pages.

Tips for Reading Extensively

2005-12-08T11:03:00.000-04:00

In the article "Tips for Reading Extensively" Leslie Ono, Richard Day and Kenton Harsch state how learners of a second language, in this case English, can give our bests in the skill of reading. As we know reading is one of the most interesting skills that we should practice, but we also know that it can be one of the most tedious activities. This authors present 10 tips that become this hard work into an easy and enjoying activity. Reading has not to be something boring. They say that the more you read the more you learn, and you have to take into account some things before start reading, for example the type of text and the level of reading you have in that language. Also, they say that is better for learners to try easy books instead of those which may be really hard for us to understand; it depends on you, as reader, to improve your capability and your reading level, that is something they call reading zone. According to this reading zone they state that day by day, while reading the book you chose, you will improve your vocabulary, fluency, grammatical knowledge, read faster and understand more, read in meaningful phrases, rather than word-by-word.
When we choose one book we have to keep in mind that it has to be interenting for us, and also reading it as a second or third time will increase our confidence while reading. They also state that we should try not to use the dictionary, and they also recommend that we should read for general understanding, because we tend to over-use the dictionary and it would keep us apart from the overall meaning of what we read. The more we read the more we will want to read , and once we start we will not stop, and if we read books that we find particulary interesting we will enjoy a lot this non tedious activity.
So, I have 2 tips for you, read the article and start practicing!!