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Chico ENGL 232 - The parts of a reading passage

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The parts of a reading passage.Student WorksheetGraham Thurgood (English 232) 89 The parts of a reading passage. This short reading goes beyond the simple comprehension questions, first forcing the learners tofind the general idea and then guiding them through an examination of the vocabulary, an examination of thewriting itself, and finally of the structure of a news story. Each section has its own learning focus. In the first section "Understanding the main idea", the stu-dents are given finding the main idea as their initial purpose for reading the passage. In a typical news story, the main idea has already been summarised for the convenience of readersin the form of the “headline”. Only then do they then read the passage. Most intermediate and advanced reading should beginwith the learners reading for the main idea.In second section, "Checking the vocabulary", the students have to find, locate, and underlinevocabulary phrases in the text. From how the vocabulary is used in the text, the students then figure out themeaning of the phrases.(Note that while they are asked to underline six phrases, only five “meanings” are given. This is toprevent them from matching a phrase to its meaning through an arbitrary process of elimination.)In the third section, the writing itself is examined. First, they examine some parallelism in the text(Notice that "swam three rivers, walked 13 kilometres, and kept a week's vigil" are parallel). Then, the stu-dents examine anaphoric reference in the text.In the next section, the structure of a news story is examined. A news story always has a “headline”(the title) which contains the main idea in a very condensed form.This is sometimes followed by a “byline” which tells readers which reporter wrote the story, or“by” whom the story is written. The news story chosen for this exercise has no byline.The “dateline” tells the “date” the story is written and also the place where the story originates.The text or news story proper that follows is written in what is called the “inverted pyramid” struc-ture. This means that instead of telling the story from beginning to the end, the reporter puts the most news-worthy or important facts at the beginning and then gives the information in descending order of importance.If done correctly, the first paragraph, called the “lead” or “intro” in newspaper jargon, tells thewhole story in the shortest form. It is almost like a long headline.Or to put it another way, the lead, like the headline, contains the main idea of the news story. But itis a longer summary of the story than the headline.The inverted pyramid style of news writing is the newspaper way of helping people read newspa-pers. Readers may not have the time to read a whole story.They can glance at the headlines pick the stories they want to read and then read the first paragraphor two to get the most important details of the news.Although the news story about the dog who followed its master to prison has no byline, that is, wedo not know the name of the reporter, it has a “credit line” at the end.This tells readers which news agency or wire service sent the story. In this case, it “credits” AP orAssociated Press as the source of the story.While AP is the source of the story received by the New Straits Times, the original source of theAP story is a report published in a Bangladesh newspaper, Sangbad.The New Straits Times also regularly receives stories from other news agencies such as Reuters,UPI (United Press International), AFP (Agence France Presse), and Bernama, Malaysia's national newsagency.Finally, the reading passage itself is used as the basis of a writing assignment.Graham Thurgood (English 232) 90Student WorksheetUnderstanding the main idea. Is the article best summarized by the title “Pet dog that followed master to prison,” by the last paragraph ofthe article, or by some other part of the article? Circle the part of the article that best summarizes the wholearticle.Checking the vocabulary.Vocabulary: Find the following words and phrases in the article and then underline them twice: a. kept a vigil b. ferried him across the riverc. released from (prison)d. wag its taile. critically woundedf. remote villageStudy each phrase and the sentence it occurs in. Decide what the phrase means in this article. Put the appro-priate letter in the blank spaces below.____ let him out of the jail____ far from a major city____ watched and waited for his master____ shook its tail to show its excitementGraham Thurgood (English 232) 91____ took to the other side of the river in a boatExamining the writing. 1. The first sentence tells three things that the dog did. Copy the parts that tell the three things andwrite one on each of the three lines below:__________________________________________________________________and then _________________________________Does the way this sentence was written help tell you that the dog did three things? ____2. The phrase the pet dog in the first paragraph refers to the dog; the next word referring the dog ishis in the phrase his master. Find and circle all the words that refer to the dog and then join yourcircles. Other words and phrases refer to Sohrab Ali. In another colour, circle each of the words or phrasesthat refer to Sohrab Ali and then join your circles.Do you think the main focus of the story was the dog or Sohrab Ali? ______ Why do you think so? __________________________________3. What is the main point of the article? Loyalty? Honesty? Helpfulness? Kindness? ____ Whydo you say so? ____The structure of a newspaper article.This is a newspaper article and newspaper articles have their own special structure.1. Where do you find the main idea of a newspaper article summarized?2. What comes first on the first line? (Hint: What is Dhaka ?)3. What does AP stand for?4. Is AP the source of the original article? ___ How many times is it made clear to the reader whatthe real source of the article is? ____ Where? _______WritingImagine that you are the president of the English Language Society in your school. You are required to givea talk to the members of your


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