Lengua Inglesa 3

Understanding texts
Purposeful
Reading is purposeful. The way you read something will depend on your purpose. (...) General
efficient reading strategies such as scanning to find the book or chapter, skimming to get the gist
and careful reading of important passages are necessary as well as learning about how texts
are structured in your subject.

Interactive
Reading is an interactive process - it is a two-way process. As a reader, you are not passive but
active. This means you have to work at constructing the meaning from the marks on the paper,
which you use as necessary. You construct the meaning using your knowledge of the language,
your subject, and the world, continually predicting and assessing. MacLachlan & Reid (1994)
talk about interpretive framing, which influences your understanding. They discuss four types of
framing:

● Extratextual framing - using your background knowledge and experience to understand

texts.
● Intratextual framing - making use of cues from the text, such as headings and
sub-headings, and referential words such as "this" and "that" to understand texts.
● Circumtextual farming - using information from the cover of the book, title, abstract, etc.
to understand the text.
● Intertextual framing - making connections with other texts you are reading to help to
underst,and your text.

You need to be active all the time when you are reading and use all the information that is
available. It is useful, therefore, before you start reading to try to actively remember what you
know, and do not know, about the subject and as you are reading to formulate questions based
on the information you have. All the information given above can be used to help you formulate
questions to keep you interacting.

Useful skills are:

● Understanding text structure/organization. Understanding the text organisation will

help you understand the writer's purpose and where to find other information.
● Understanding conceptual meaning, e.g. comparison, purpose, cause, effect
● Understanding reference in the text, e.g. it, he, this, that, these those
 ● Dealing with difficult words and sentences. (Remember “long complex sentences” ? )
● Critical reading Reading critically - evaluating arguments, weighing evidence,
recognizing implications, and assumptions, the author's point of view.

Understanding texts
Understanding text structure/organisation.
Every text has a structure. It is not just a random collection of sentences. The parts that make
up the text are related in a meaningful way to each other. Recognising the way in which a text
has been organised will help you to understand it better. The writer may, for example, be
explaining two opposing points of view, or describing why something happens. Undestanding
the text organisation will help you understand what the writer is trying to do.

Look at the structure of the following text.

The Personal Qualities of a Teacher

1. Here I want to try to give you an answer to the question: What personal
qualities are desirable in a teacher? Probably no two people would
draw up exactly similar lists, but I think the following would be
generally accepted.
2. First, the teacher’s personality should be pleasantly live and attractive.
This does not rule out people who are physically plain, or even ugly,
because many such have great personal charm. But it does rule out
such types as the over-excitable, melancholy, frigid, sarcastic, cynical,
frustrated, and over-bearing : I would say too, that it excludes all of
dull or purely negative personality. I still stick to what I said in my
earlier book: that school children probably ‘suffer more from bores
than from brutes’.
3. Secondly, it is not merely desirable but essential for a teacher to have a
genuine capacity for sympathy - in the literal meaning of that word; a
capacity to tune in to the minds and feelings of other people,
especially, since most teachers are school teachers, to the minds and
feelings of children. Closely related with this is the capacity to be
tolerant - not, indeed, of what is wrong, but of the frailty and
 immaturity of human nature which induce people, and again especially
children, to make mistakes.
4. Thirdly, I hold it essential for a teacher to be both intellectually and
morally honest. This does not mean being a plaster saint. It means that
he will be aware of his intellectual strengths, and limitations, and will
have thought about and decided upon the moral principles by which his
life shall be guided. There is no contradiction in my going on to say
that a teacher should be a bit of an actor. That is part of the technique
of teaching, which demands that every now and then a teacher should
be able to put on an act - to enliven a lesson, correct a fault, or award
praise. Children, especially young children, live in a world that is
rather larger than life.
5. A teacher must remain mentally alert. He will not get into the
profession if of low intelligence, but it is all too easy, even for people
of above-average intelligence, to stagnate intellectually - and that
means to deteriorate intellectually. A teacher must be quick to adapt
himself to any situation, however improbable and able to improvise, if
necessary at less than a moment’s notice. (Here I should stress that I
use ‘he’ and ‘his’ throughout the book simply as a matter of
convention and convenience.)
6. On the other hand, a teacher must be capable of infinite patience. This,
I may say, is largely a matter of self-discipline and self-training; we are
none of us born like that. He must be pretty resilient; teaching makes
great demands on nervous energy. And he should be able to take in his
stride the innumerable petty irritations any adult dealing with children
has to endure.
7. Finally, I think a teacher should have the kind of mind which always
wants to go on learning. Teaching is a job at which one will never be
perfect; there is always something more to learn about it. There are
three principal objects of study: the subject, or subjects, which the
teacher is teaching; the methods by which they can best be taught to
the particular pupils in the classes he is teaching; and - by far the most
important - the children, young people, or adults to whom they are to
be taught. The two cardinal principles of British education today are
that education is education of the whole person, and that it is best
acquired through full and active co-operation between two persons, the
teacher and the learner.
 (From Teaching as a Career, by H. C. Dent) ^
Notice how the text is structured. Paragraph 1 asks a question and paragraphs 2 - 7 answer it.

Question What are the desirable personal qualities in a teacher? paragraph 1

Answer Quality 1. personality should be pleasantly live and attractive paragraph 2

Quality 2. essential to have a genuine capacity for sympathy paragraph 3

Quality 3. essential to be both intellectually and morally honest paragraph 4

Quality 4. must remain mentally alert paragraph 5

Quality 5. must be capable of infinite patience paragraph 6

Quality 6. should have the kind of mind which always wants to paragraph 7
go on learning

Understanding texts
Understanding conceptual meaning
You will be able to increase both your speed of reading and your comprehension if you can
recognise some of the rhetorical functions that the writer is using. Writers use language, for
example, to analyse, to describe, to report, to define, to instruct, to classify, to compare, to give
examples, to explain, to give reasons, to argue and discuss and to draw conclusions. To
understand the text it is necessary to understand what the writer's purpose is.

Examples
The following paragraph describes a building:
 The largest building, in the very centre of the town, is boarded up completely
and leans so far to the right that it seems bound to collapse at any minute. The
house is very old. There is about it a curious, cracked look that is very
puzzling until you suddenly realize that at one time, and long ago, the right
side of the front porch had been painted, and part of the wall - but the painting
was left unfinished and one portion of the house is darker and dingier than the
other. The building looks completely deserted. Nevertheless, on the second
floor there is one window which is not boarded; sometimes in the late
afternoon when the heat is at its worst a hand will slowly open the shutter and
a face will look down on the town.

The following example classifies, and also describes.

The Classification of Species

The group species is the starting point for classification. Sometimes smaller
groups, subspecies, are recognized, but these will not concern us until we
discuss evolution. There are many larger groups: genus, family, order, class,
phylum, and kingdom. Let us begin with the first seven species. We belong to
the genus Homo and to these more inclusive groups: (1) the family
Hominidae, which includes, in addition to Homo, extinct men not of the
genus Homo, and (2) the order Primates, which includes also the lemurs,
monkeys and apes. The three cats - lion, house cat, and tiger - belong to the
genus Fells. In general we can think of a genus as a group of closely related
species. The three cats also belong to the family Felidae. Generally a family
includes related genera. The first seven species, different enough to be put in
three orders, are yet alike in many ways. All are covered with hair, they nurse
their young with milk, and their red blood cells are without nuclei. Because of
these and other resemblances they are combined in a still more inclusive
group, Class Mammalia. A class, therefore, is composed of related orders.

The following paragraph pattern is one in which several things are compared or contrasted.

A one-million-fold increase in speed characterizes the development of

machine computation over the past thirty years. The increase results from
improvements in computer hardware. In the 1940s ENIAC, an early electronic
computer, filled a room with its banks of vacuum tubes and miles of wiring.
Today one can hold in the hand a computing device costing about $200 that is
twenty times faster than ENIAC, has more components and a larger memory,
 is thousands of times more reliable, costs 1/10,000 the price, and consumes
the power of a light bulb rather than that of a locomotive.

In this type of pattern, the purpose is to explain cause and effect.

One of the most important properties of a liquid is that its surface behaves like
an elastic covering that is continually trying to decrease its area. A result of
this tendency for the surface to contract is the formation of liquids into
droplets as spherical as possible considering the constraint of the ever-present
gravity force. Surface tension arises because the elastic attractive forces
between molecules inside a liquid are symmetrical; molecules situated near
the surface are attracted from the inside but not the outside. The surface
molecules experience a net inward force; and consequently, moving a surface
molecule out of the surface requires energy.

The following paragraphs gives arguments for and against.

One of the first men to make a commercial success of food conservation was
Henry John Heinz. He started by bottling horseradish, and he was so
successful that in 1869 he founded a company in Pittsburgh, USA. Like other
Americans of his generation, Heinz made his name a household word
throughout the western world. At last, man seems to have discovered how to
preserve food without considerably altering its taste. The tins of food (Heinz
tins!) which Captain Scott abandoned in the Antarctic were opened 47 years
after his death, and the contents were not only edible, but pleasant.
The main argument against conserved foods is not that the canning of food
makes it taste different; rather, people complain that the recipes which the
canning chefs dream up are tedious or tasteless when it is eaten in great
quantities. And a company like Heinz can only produce something if it is
going to be eaten in great quantities. The tomato is very pleasant to eat when
it is freshly picked. A regular diet of tomatoes alone could well prove tedious.
The canning companies try to cook the tomato in as many ways as possible.
The Heinz factories in Britain use millions and millions of tomatoes every
year. They claim that if all the tomatoes were loaded on to 15-ton lorries, the
line of lorries would stretch for 60 miles.
But there are many people who do not like to eat food out of season. They
like their food to be fresh, and they like to cook it themselves in "the
old-fashioned way". But it is very difficult for modern man to realise what it
is like to live without the advantages of pre-packageded and canned food.
 European society in its present form could not cope without modern methods
of food processing. Imagine your local supermarket without all the cans of
pre-packaged foods. There wouldn't be much variety left, and what was left
would have to be increased enormously in order to give the same amount of
food. The supermarket would turn into a chaos of rotting vegetables, stale
bread and unhealthy meat. The health problems would be insurmountable,
unless we all went into the country to support ourselves.
So next time you reject canned food as being tasteless or unimaginative,
remember that you can only afford to eat fresh food because canned food
exists.

The following paragraph is a narrative; it tells a story.

Harold I (of Norway), called The Fairhaired (860?-940?), was king of

Norway (885?-933?), and the first person to rule, at least nominally, the entire
country. Harold inherited three small domains in eastern, central, and western
Norway from his father, Halfdan the Black, and set out to conquer the rest of
the country. After many years of campaigning, during which the chieftains of
western Norway offered the most stubborn resistance, Harold gained his final
victory in the Battle of Hafrsfjord, which probably took place around 885,
although it may have been some years later. Once in power, Harold ruled with
a strong hand and consolidated his realm. One result of his firm rule was the
acceleration of the immigration that had begun shortly before to pioneer
settlements in Iceland. Many chieftains also fled to the Western (British) Isles,
from where they and their kinsfolk in the Orkneys, Shetlands, and Hebrides
raided the Norwegian coast. Harold was finally compelled to send a punitive
expedition across the North Sea to flush out these Vikings. For the same
purpose he entered into an alliance with King Athelstan of England; but he
made no actual conquests. In his old age Harold abdicated in favor of his
eldest legitimate son, Eric Bloodaxe, who was deposed by his half brother
Håkon I after a few years of misrule.

Exercise 1
Read the following paragraph. Decide which rhetorical structures are used.

What type of vocabulary and style is employed? Are subjective statements or mainly/exclusively
facts?
 1. DIVISIONS OF GEOLOGICAL TIME

The rocks of the accessible part of the earth are divided into five major
divisions or eras, which are in the order of decreasing age, Archeozoic,
Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. Superposition is the
criterion of age. Each rock is considered younger than the one on which it
rests, provided there is no structural evidence to the contrary, such as
overturning or thrust faulting. As one looks at a tall building there is no doubt
in the mind of the observer that the top story was erected after the one on
which it rests and is younger than it in order of time. So it is in stratigraphy in
which strata are arranged in an orderly sequence based upon their relative
positions. Certainly the igneous and metamorphic rocks at the bottom of the
Grand Canyon are the oldest rocks exposed along the Colorado River in
Arizona and each successively higher formation is relatively younger than the
one beneath it.

key answers:
Comparison and contrast / classification

Dealing with difficult words and sentences

Dealing with difficult words and sentences.
Academic texts are often difficult: they have difficult ideas expressed in difficult language. From
a language point of view, there are several features that make the text difficult. They include
difficult words, difficult combinations of nouns and difficult sentences.

Difficult words.

It is unlikely that you will know every word in a text and even if you think you have seen every
word before, it is unlikely that you will have seen a particular word in its present context. It is
therefore necessary to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words in context and, perhaps,
familiar words in new contexts. This is necessary even if you have a dictionary as your
dictionary does not know the exact context in which the word is being used.

If you think your vocabulary level is too low for academic work there are three solutions: read,
read and read.

A. Is it necessary to know the exact meaning of a particular word? Often a rough meaning is
enough (does the word have a positive or negative meaning?). Remember that the purpose of
reading an academic text is to get information and it is possible to understand the text without
knowing the meaning of every word. It is not necessary to be able to explain, or translate, the
meaning of a word.

B. Look for definitions. The author may know a particular word may be new so explains. The
author may also be using the word in a new, or unusual way so will need to explain how it is
being used. This will be done by using a definition, an explanation, an example or by using a
synonym (a word with the same meaning). The phrases "called", "known as", "is the name
applied to", "in other words", "that is", "is said to be" are often used.

Examples:

1. The words "polybrachygyny" and "leks" are explained

Some male birds spend all their time mating and do not
provide the female with any benefits other than indications
of their vigour. This condition, called polybrachygyny,
means that males that show the most effective displays are
most persuasive in attracting females. These displays are
given at localised courting places called leks.

2. The phrases "free-running experiments" and "free-running rhythms" are

explained.

Because there are no constraints placed upon the timing of

the volunteer's activities in such a time-free environment,
these are called free-running experiments and the rhythms
measured during them are known as free-running rhythms.

3. Synonym in apposition or with "or"

A majority of experts agree that neandertaloids were the

first members of our species, Homo sapiens.

Most metals are malleable; they can be hammered into flat

sheets; nonmetals lack this quality. Some metals are also
ductile; they can be drawn out into thin wires; nonmetals
are not usually ductile.
 Glandular fever, or infectious mononucleosis, is a serious
disease.

Each transformed organism is fitted to or adapted to its

habitat.

4. Example

We humans are Animalia: mobile, multicelled organisms

that derive energy from ingestion ("eating").

Methadone is an example of a synthetic narcotic drug.

5. Description

The Anthropoidea, on the other hand, are sometimes called

the "higher primates." They have relatively larger and
rounder skull cases, flatter faces, and mobile lips detached
from the gums.

6. Explanation using "that is"

Each tribal group, identified by the language it speaks, is an

exogamous unit; that is, people must marry outside the
group and therefore always marry someone who speaks
another language.
7. Explanation using "-"

Today, the sense of anomie - alienation, disconnectedness -

at Apple is major.
8. Explanation using "()"

This resource comprises linkers which connect sentences to

each other, but excludes paratactic and hypotactic
(coordinating and subordinating) linkers within sentences.
C. Work out the meaning of the word or phrase.
 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

(From Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky")

There are two main approaches to doing this. It may not tell you the exact meaning of the word,
but it may help you to narrow down the possibilities so the text makes sense:

1. You can analyse the word itself. You can look inside the word. You can use your
knowledge of similar words and look at how the word is constructed. Using this
information you can find information about (a) the meaning of the word as well as
(b) grammatical information.

a. Affixes can help you work out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. For
example, if you do not know the meaning of the word
"incomprehensible", you can work it out if you are familiar with
"comprehend" meaning understand, "in" meaning not, and "ible"
meaning can. Therefore "an incomprehensible sentence" refers to a
sentence that you cannot understand.

In the Jabberwocky text above, we know "outgrabe" is a verb because

"out-" is a common verb prefix ("outwit", "outdo")

See Vocabulary building: Affixes and roots for more examples

b. It is not usually difficult to work out the grammatical category: noun,

verb, adjective, adverb etc. If the word ends in "-ing" or "-ed" it could
be a verb; if the word ends in "-ly", it may be an adverb; if the word
ends in "-tion", it is possibly a noun. If the word ends in "-ise", it is
probably a verb. If you see a sentence like "The spid claned lanly",
you can work out that "claned" is the past tense of the verb "clane",
and "lanly" is an adverb.

In the Jabberwocky text above, we know "borogroves", "raths" and

"toves" are nouns because "-s" is a common noun suffix, and "slithy"
is an adjective because "-y" is a common adjective suffix.
 2. You can use the context. You can make use of the other words, phrases,
sentences and information around the problematic word. Using this information you
can find information about the meaning of the word as well as grammatical
information. (a) Grammatical information can be obtained from the place of the
word in the sentence. (b) Information about the meaning of the word can come from
the meanings of the other words in the context.

a. By using your knowledge of typical English clause and phrase

structure, you can often work out the grammatical function of a
particular word. Typical clause structures are SPO, SPA, SPOC.

In the sentence, "The spid claned lanly", as articles usually precede

nouns, you can also assume that "spid" is a noun.

In the Jabberwocky text above, we know "slithy" is an adjective

because it comes between "the" and "toves".

b. Information about the meaning of the word can come from the
meanings of the other words in the context. Using your knowledge of
the world and your subject can help. You can, for example, make use of
your knowledge of the relationship between object and purpose, "He
took the ... and drank", "She sat on the ..." or cause and effect, "The
heavy ... caused the river to rise". Words and phrases connected with
"and", "moreover" or "in addition" will have related meanings and
clauses connected with "while" or "although" will have opposite
meanings.

You will need to use context even with simple words like "like", "too", "light", " fly", as they
have different meanings and grammatical forms. You will need to use the context to determine
which is being used in a particular situation.

Noun combinations

Combinations of nouns are common in academic texts. A "steel box" is a box made of steel and
a "computer programmer" is someone who programmes computers. The problem is to
understand the relationship between the nouns. A "hand towel" is a towel for drying your hands
but a "bath towel" is not a towel for drying the bath. A "paper bag" is a bag made out of paper,
but a "hand bag" is not a bag made out of hands and a "shopping bag" is not a bag made out of
shopping. Williams (1984, p. 149) distinguishes 10 different functions:

function example expansion

B of A brewery warehouse the warehouse of (owned by) the brewery

means heat affected zone the zone affected by heat

purpose safety harness a harness for purposes of improved safety

location roof trusses trusses in the roof

materials used steel boxes boxes made of steel

cause and effect frost damage damage caused by frost

extent tension areas areas over which there is tension

characteristic striation markings markings characterized by striations

shape or form web plates plates in the shape of webs

representation force and motion data data that represents force and motion

In order to understand these combinations, it is first necessary to identify the headword and
work backwards.

Difficult sentences

When a sentence cannot be understood even though all the vocabulary is known, it is often
because it is long and syntactically complex. There are a number of causes of difficulty:

1. complex nominal groups

 2. nominalisation
3. co-ordination
4. subordination

A. A nominal group is a head noun modified by adjectives, nouns, or other words which may
come before or after it. It is often the words that come after the head noun that cause most
difficulty.

1. In this example "unwillingness" is the head noun.

One reason for this may have lain in the unwillingness of

biologists to accept the highly abstract nature of his theory.

2. In this example "recommendations" is the head noun.

This side of the issue was entrusted to Lord Brabazon of Tara,

whose committee was invited to make recommendations on the
types of aircraft that Britain should produce for the postwar
period.

In such a sentence, it is useful to try to identify the head noun.

B. Nominalisation is common in academic texts. This is the formation of a noun from a verb. In
the examples above, "unwillingness" is a noun from the verb "willing", and "recommendations" is
a noun from the verb "recommend". As if often the case with complex sentences, it is useful to
change the noun back to a verb and work out which nouns, functioning as subject and object,
are associated with it. In example 1 above, the subject of unwilling is "biologists".

C. Co-ordination is joining sentences together with words like "and" or "but". It is sometimes
difficult to decide exactly what is joined together.

1. In this sentence "or" joins "twenty-five sleepers" with "forty to forty-five day
passengers".

In October 1944, Lord Knollys, the BOAC chairman, told a

meeting held in the Ministry of Aircraft production that the
Brabazon Type 3 would be the airline's "bread and butter" aircraft
for Empire routes, carrying twenty-five sleepers or forty to
forty-five day passengers.

2. Another example with " or".

 It is addressed primarily to people who grew up in the embrace of
the liberal tradition or who at least have felt its attraction.

3. Similarly with "and".

In addition, Lautrec's dramatically reductive and stylized

treatment of this painting suggests a connection to the
contemporary work of the Cloisonnists and to Gauguin's
Synthetism.

4. And again.

The main grist to the mill of policing was working-class youth, but
the perennial conflict between youth and the police is one with
ever-changing persona and is not the basis of political conflict.

D. Subordinate noun-clauses are often difficult to understand as they make it difficult for the
reader to understand which nouns function as subject or object of the verb. It is useful in such a
situation to identify the basic structure of the sentence by identifying the main verb and then
asking various questions like "Who does what?"

1. In this example the main verb is "ought to blame". Ask who ought to blame
whom.

Those commentators who blame Labour for not pursuing an

alternative set of more socially just proposals in the conditions of
August 1931 ought to blame the electorate for not giving Labour
sufficient support to form a majority government in 1929.

In this case the "commentators" ought to blame the "electorate". "Which

commentators" and "Why" are useful follow up questions.

2. In this example, the main verb is "had divided". Ask who had divided what.

The minority in the Labour Cabinet who opposed the cut in the
standard rate of benefit had divided the Labour government, not
on the question of whether the budget should be balanced, but on
the subordinate question of how the budget should be balanced.

It is also useful to try to make simple sentences using all the verbs and other information in the
text.
3. In the following text,

Professor Bernard Wasserstein of Brandeis University is shortly to

publish a new biography of Herbert Samuel, who was, in effect,
leader of the Liberal party for the crucial months of 1931, during
Lloyd George's illness, and a central figure in the crisis.

● Professor Wassertein is shortly to publish a new biography.

● Professor Wassertein works at Brandeis University.
● Herbert Samuel was leader of the Liberal party in 1931.
● Lloyd George was ill.
● Herbert Samuel was leader of the Liberal party during the illness.
● Herbert Samuel was a central figure in the crisis.