Praxis Basic Skills for Educators - (5751): Reading & Writing

Before you can begin to practice inference in literature, you should know what you are looking for. Your goal is to find

intended meaning of the text.

Motif

is an object or idea which reoccurs throughout a work of literature. Through their repetition and placement, motifs can contribute to an author's thematic statement.

Drawing conclusions

is using information that is implied or inferred to make meaning out of what is not clearly stated. Writers give readers hints or clues that help them read between the lines, since not everything is explicitly stated or spelled out all the time.

Restating an idea is

just saying it in different words. A restatement uses different sentence structure. When you want to restate an idea, don't start with the original phrasing and try to change it.

data

kinds of statistics or numerical info that pinpoints a quantity related to topic.

Restating

means expressing the same idea in different words, but not necessarily in a shorter form.

central idea

or main point, of her argument

Close-Reading Strategies

requires us to take a deeper look at the choices authors make at the word, sentence and paragraph level. Readers must become detectives, investigating things like repeating sounds, word choices and figurative language, and their effect on the text.

Analyzing literature

s much like reading directions. First, you tackle literature by reading it once for comprehension. Does it make sense as a whole? Do you understand the events that lead from the beginning to the middle to the end - the basic plot? Are there important parts of the puzzle that you need to recognize?

Intended meaning

understood meaning

Which is a way to challenge yourself in finding the gist?

Challenge yourself to find the gist by following the four steps using writings you are unfamiliar with.

In examining author style and language, what is it that you need to already have a working knowledge of?

Literary devices

Setting

The time and place of a story

What does the last phase of literary analysis involve?

Themes and morals/messages

Character Analysis

What more can we say about the tortoise and the hare? In what ways can we really bring them to life in our mind? Well, we know 'the hare is a braggart with confidence in his abilities to move quickly.' We know 'the tortoise is quiet and predictably slower than the hare.' Here, we basically fill in more details about the characters.

2nd Person point of view

When the story is addressed directly to the reader and makes the reader a character in the story (For instance, '...you walk down the street' or 'You buy a carton of milk...'). Second-person point-of-view is uncommon in literature.

First Person point of view

When the voice telling the story is in fact a character within the story. One way to identify a first-person point-of-view is that the voice speaking will use the word 'I' to refer to his own part in the action.

Character Comprehension

That's easy. 'The Hare' and 'The Tortoise.'

What does the last phase of literary analysis involve?

The last phase of literary analysis includes considering all of the elements previously examined in order to draw conclusions, the most common of those is theme and moral of the story or message.

Close reading

A careful reading that is attentive to organization, figurative language, sentence structure, vocabulary, and other literary and structural elements of a text.

conclusion

A summary based on evidence or facts

Chekhov's Gun

Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright who believed that each element added to a story should be meaningful. Chekhov wrote, Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

Epigraph

is a reference to another work that an author hopes will help readers understand her own work. Unlike an allusion, an epigraph stands apart from the text itself rather than being included in it.

A word's denotation

is the definition of the word. In our first example, both 'skinny' and 'thin' have the same denotation.

In order to effectively draw conclusions, readers need to:

Consider what they already know from their own experiences Gather all of the information that the author has given them (characters' personalities, feelings and motivations, the time period and place, conflicts, etc.)

thematic statement

is what the author is trying to say about their subject through their choice of major and minor themes and how writers use those themes to deliver a message.

Themes

Overarching ideas or driving premises of a work.

Plot Comprehension

You can do this. Easy. 'The fast hare challenges other animals to a race. The slow and steady tortoise accepts the challenge. The hare, who is confident in his abilities, decides to take a nap on the course. As a result, he loses.'

Connotation

an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.

figurative language

the description brings a deeper meaning and understanding to the words.

To strengthen your argument further, you may want

to cite statistics that are relevant to the context of your argument and the conclusion you have drawn. adding data

There are many factors affecting how you respond to and interpret a given text, including:

values, beliefs, ethnic heritage, cultural background, and personal experiences.

If you were to create an argument outline, it would likely look something like this:

1) introduction 2) body, including relevant context & background info as well as claims, associated evidence & supporting details 3) opposing positions 4) conclusion

steps to evaluating reason

1) must do is break down the claim. A claim has two parts, the conclusion and the premise.

simile

A comparison of two unlike things using like or as

Which of the following is an example of a close reading strategy?

Examining the sound patterns of a poem.

Setting Comprehension

Is the setting clear in this one? Hmm. It doesn't give a specific location or a time period, so this isn't initially clear. 'No basic setting.'

euphemism.

Often in literature, whether for humor or just for taste, a writer wishes to describe some graphic or offensive event using milder imagery or phrasing.

Which of the following is NOT a strategy for improving reading comprehension?

Practicing your writing based on activities in your daily life; Getting better at figuring out the gist will also improve your reading speed and reading comprehension. This does NOT include practicing your writing based on activities and subjects you are familiar with in your daily life. Instead, the best area of challenge is to read works you are unfamiliar with, or are very new to you, while practicing the four steps.

strategies for close reading

Read the text Focus simply on understanding what the words mean and what the work means as a whole. Pay close attention to any repeated images or words. Annotate the text Read through the work again, this time taking notes. Underline words you think are important Reading in this way - marking the text while re-reading it several times

At the beginning of William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, we are given the information that the characters live in Verona. What basic part of comprehension does this information fulfill?

Setting

Foreshadowing

When an author hints at the ending of or at an upcoming event in her story without fully divulging it, she is using what's called; A narrative device that hints at coming events; often builds suspense or anxiety in the reader.

Which of the following is NOT an advantage of learning to find the gist of a piece of text you are reading?

You can eventually begin to skip over parts of passages as you read and still figure out what's going on in the writing. Explanation Finding the gist of a reading allows you to read things only once and figure out what the author means, which is valuable on timed tests. This information is also more readily sent to long-term memory because you begin to make connections between it and other items you have read.

Big-Picture Reading Strategies

take a much wider view than close-reading strategies. With big-picture strategies, we take the poem, play or novel as a whole, thinking about elements that wind through the entire work. One big-picture strategy is to examine the author's overall message and how he or she delivers that message. Another big-picture strategy is to look at how the author handles a big question like fate versus free-will.

How do you paraphrase a source?

1)reread original 2 or 3 xs or until you are sure you understand it. 2) try to write the main ideas in your own words. 3)Look closely at unfamiliar words, observing carefully the exact sense in which the writer uses the words. 4)Check your paraphrase, as often as needed, against the original for accurate tone and meaning, changing any words or phrases that match the original too closely. 5)Include a citation for the source of the information (including the page numbers) so that you can cite the source accurately.

personification.

A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes

inductive reasoning

A type of logic in which generalizations are based on a large number of specific observations.

Imagery

Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste)

a story's structure.

Each author has to choose how the events of the story are arranged, and the arrangement she chooses is called

When you interpret literature,

you are trying to find the meaning, or theme, of the story. One way to do so is by using the text. When you use the text, you should examine the literary elements that the author includes. When examining, you should ask questions about each of them to see how they relate to each other and how they relate to the theme. The final step of using the text to guide your interpretation is to connect the writing to our own experiences.

Setting Analysis

Okay, since nothing is explicitly stated, can we gather any more information about setting? Maybe information that is implied? The story does hint at a social context - 'the animal world' - which you could argue is a contributor to the setting here. Okay, that's something we can gather that is implied.

deductive reasoning

reasoning in which a conclusion is reached by stating a general principle and then applying that principle to a specific case (The sun rises every morning; therefore, the sun will rise on Tuesday morning.)

Fables

are short stories, usually about talking animals, that teach a lesson. Since fables teach a lesson, you know they have a theme; after all, themes are really just lessons about life!

Central ideas and themes

are the same thing - the big points that are being made about life. The fable of The Tortoise and the Hare has a lesson to teach about life: slow and steady wins the race.

Unlike a restatement, a summary

condenses the original text into a shorter version. Typically, a summary briefly mentions the main points but doesn't repeat all the details. If you're summarizing an argument, the summary should touch on the important claims, but without going into all the details about the evidence used to support the argument.

When making an argument , it is important to

ensure that there are no assumptions made. Assumptive arguments can be avoided by providing factual evidence that can support the argument, having a persuasive argument on controversial topics that convince the audience to take the opinion of the presenter, and ensuring the sentence uses general statements.

The four types of common multiple-choice questions used for literature

factual, drawing conclusions, analysis, and inference.

literary analysis

focuses on how plot/structure, character, setting, and many other techniques are used by the author to create meaning;

red herrings

foreshadowing can also be used to throw us off the murderer's scent, so to speak, with deliberately placed clues called

Theme

is an underlying message in a piece of literature. It is the central idea of a story, sometimes easily summed up in a single word, such as 'love' or 'death.' That doesn't mean that what a literary work has to say about the theme is simple.

What Is Inference?

is using observation and background to reach a logical conclusion. You probably practice inference every day. For example, if you see someone eating a new food and he or she makes a face, then you infer he does not like it. Or if someone slams a door, you can infer that she is upset about something.

Summarizing

means quickly going over main ideas in a shorter from than the original idea.

The three basic parts of literary analysis are

reading for comprehension, interpreting what you've read, and creating an analytical statement about the piece as a whole.

Diction

refers to an author's choice of words. When describing the events of her story, an author never has just one word at her disposal. Rather, she must choose from many words that have similar denotative meanings (the definition you'd find in a dictionary), but different connotative meanings (the associations, positive or negative with a given word).

Deductive validity

states that it is impossible for the conclusion to be true if the premise is false. In other words, if the premise cannot stand on its own, the conclusion has no chance of being true.

characters

the people or animals in a story

Plot

the sequence of events in a literary work

differentiate between a text's subject and its themes

themes to focus their message and subject; While several works of literature explore war or love or family as their primary subject

paraphrasing

using your own words to express someone else's message or ideas. In a paraphrase, the ideas and meaning of the original source must be maintained; the main ideas need to come through, but the wording has to be your own.

symbolic foreshadowing

when events, objects or even colors hint at what is in store for a character. Sometimes it can be a small detail that only English professors know is there; for example, a main character's name might have a deeply significant meaning in Greek or Latin that fits in with what eventually happens to her.

3rd Person Point of view

when the action is narrated by a voice that is not involved in the story beyond knowing what's going on. it is a 'God' voice. It can see what's going on, but no one else can. Often, a third-person point-of-view will even peer into characters' thoughts.

How to Practice Making Inferences

1) Reaching a conclusion of the intended meaning of a writing is to look at the author. 2) Look at his/her other works and see what they have in common. Read author's biography; 4) look at the historical and cultural context of the writing. 5)Your goal as you read is to make conclusions. These conclusions are not stated, but you should read between the lines to understand what the author is trying to say. 6) make guesses. Try to guess what will happen next in the story, what a character may say or think or even what other characters not in the scene are doing. 7) ask questions. Why are the characters acting a certain way? What are they thinking? Where are they going? What are they feeling? What do you already know? What is missing? Why is the author not including information? 8)you should make predictions What do you think will happen next? How will a character react? What will the outcome be? 9) Take time to review the guesses and predictions you had made and see which ones are correct.

Symbolism and other literary devices

Here's where you have to be familiar with the rest of your literary devices. One that immediately jumps out at the reader involves the animals talking to each other - 'personification.' That's a start. You could argue that there are innumerable literary devices at play here as well (the use of 'character foil,' maybe a bit of 'suspense,' the creation of 'hubris' in a character). What's the point of examining all this? It creates a more vivid picture for the reader while taking a close look at language and author choice. These are important steps that lead to final analysis.

Tom is guiding a group of his students through a big picture reading of Romeo and Juliet. Which of the scenarios below should NOT be included as part of this guided reading?

Identifying interesting word choices is a close-reading strategy, NOT a big-picture strategy, so it should not be included as part of this particular guided reading lesson.

Key Elements of a Story

Plot - the main events of the story. When you analyze the plot, you should look at how the main events are presented. How does the author share the story? In what order are the details presented? Does the author include foreshadowing, suspense, or flashbacks? What conflicts do the characters endure? Characters - the people in the story. What are the characters like? How do they relate to each other? Do they change or stay the same? What traits do they have? What role do the minor characters play? Setting - where the story takes place. Where does the story take place? What historical era or location? What important details does the author share about the setting? What mood is introduced through the setting? Symbols - objects that hold other meanings. What symbols or images are used in the text? Is there an image that is repeated throughout? What do the symbols and images represent? Point of view - who is telling the story. Who is the narrator? What do we learn through this point of view? What do we not know? How are we limited?

Which of the following is NOT a strategy for improving reading comprehension?

Practicing your writing based on activities in your daily life; Explanation Getting better at figuring out the gist will also improve your reading speed and reading comprehension. This does NOT include practicing your writing based on activities and subjects you are familiar with in your daily life. Instead, the best area of challenge is to read works you are unfamiliar with, or are very new to you, while practicing the four steps.

A student finds herself constantly trying to figure out what the author meant when she reads sections of her textbook. Which of the following is NOT a way to improve her reading for the gist of the section?

Re-reading the article several times; xplanation There are four steps to help you increase your skill in finding the gist of a written piece including: 1.) always ask yourself 'what is the point' when reading through a work, 2.) predict where the author will go to next in their writing, 3.) summarize the gist of the article 4.) evaluate just how well the author did explaining the gist.

Process for answering multiple choice literary text

Step One: Notice the title if there is one. Step Two: Read the text. Underline key words as you go (words that aid in the overall understanding of a piece). Take notes in the margin that may help with comprehension. Step Three: Can you summarize the piece? If so, it's best to write a phrase at the bottom that summarizes the piece. Step Four: What type of piece is in front of you? Fiction, non-fiction, or poetry? Write it down. If any context is given to you in the title, take note

What is the definition of 'gist'?

The conclusion of an article. Explanation Merriam-Webster defines gist as the main point or part: the essence.

analytical statement about the piece as a whole.

This can include things like theme, author commentary or choices, overall character analysis, how literature reflects a time period, etc. -

Author Style and Language Analysis

Well, this is a bit tougher. It's an examination of point-of-view, imagery, symbolism, other literary devices, the use of repetition, and any other choices the author makes that create a unique piece. This particular step in the process can be one that takes quite a while. Not only are you examining the presence of these aspects of the writing, but you will also have to consider why they are there at all and what purpose might they serve. Examine the work under the assumption that the authors make deliberate choices, and their choices support the overall goal of delivering a specific message.

Point-of-view

What is the point of view here? From what we can tell, it's 'third person.' Third person omniscient means that the narrator sees the thoughts and feelings of all characters. Third person limited is when the thoughts and feelings of only one character are revealed. Tough to tell here. The hare took a nap to show contempt for the tortoise, so we know that we are, at least, in the mind of the hare. That much ('third person limited') could be argued.

Plot Analysis

What more can we say about the plot? Well, we can figure out what the essential elements of the plot of this story are (the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution). The exposition here? 'The initial invitation to race by the hare.' The rising action? 'After the tortoise accepts the challenge, it is the hare's boastful comments, the initial running of the race, and the hare's choice to take a nap.' The climax here comes 'after the tortoise passes the hare and wins the race.' The resolution? Not much of a resolution

metaphor

a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

Identify the purpose of visualization for reading comprehension

brings the reading to life. First, it makes it easier for us to understand the text because we are looking beyond the words and creating images. Through the images, we are able to recall the material much easier. Second, it helps you feel more connected to the material. You are able to see the characters and their actions and feel as if you are a part of the scene. Finally, it creates a more personal experience and even links you with the story. By imagining the characters and the setting, you are becoming more involved in the story.

interpretive communities:

groups of readers who interpret what a text says in a similar manner.

Reader Response Theory

hat makes use of the strong personal response an individual reader has to any particular text. This theory comes close to stating that every text is created anew every time a different reader opens a book.

Point-of-view

hen telling a story, an author must choose what perspective she will tell the story from. The perspective the story is told from is called the point-of-view. There are three main kinds of point-of-view: first person, 2nd person and 3rd person

Why is it important to make inferences?

hen writing a story, an author will not include all the information for us. He/she will expect us to read between the lines and reach conclusions about the text. When making inferences, you are looking beyond what is stated in the text and finding the ideas to which the author only hints. This makes you a more active reader and critical thinker. It also makes it easier to understand what the author is sharing with you.

Personification

is a part of figurative language. A writer can either say something literally, or figuratively. If it's literal, then the words mean exactly what they say. But the meaning of figurative words is hidden behind description. When a writer uses figurative language, the description brings a deeper meaning and understanding to the words.

Visualization

is creating pictures in our mind as we read. It becomes an important way to comprehend our reading material. When you visualize, you should think about the smells, sounds, tastes, sights, and even the feelings. You can think about it as making a movie of the material as you read it.

What is Close Reading?

is re-reading a text carefully, and with purpose. It is becoming actively engaged in what we read by paying close attention to the words, the ideas, the structure, the flow, and the purpose of the text, in order to really think about what the author said, and compare it with what we know, what we believe, and what we think.

One type approach to reading, big-picture reading

is the 'far' view. Seeing things from a distance allows us to make generalizations, and see patterns and overarching themes we can use to describe a work of literature as a whole.

premise

is the argument given to support the claim.

allusion

is when an author refers to the events or characters from another story in her own story with the hopes that those events will add context or depth to the story she's trying to tell. While allusions are common, they are also risky because the author has no certain way of knowing her readers are familiar with the other story. To limit that risk, allusions are often to very famous works such as the Bible or Shakespearean plays.

Analyzing literature.

much like reading directions, reading it once for 1)comprehension, 2) move on to interpretation, which really means filling in the pieces of the puzzle that are not explicitly stated. finally you pull all of this information together to create an analytical statement about the piece as a whole.

Symbols

objects that hold other meanings. What symbols or images are used in the text? Is there an image that is repeated throughout? What do the symbols and images represent?

Inductive validity asks us to

ome up with a reasonable answer from the premise given and evaluate if this is in line with our conclusion. Put another way, it is improbable for a premise to be true and the conclusion to be false. However, it is possible, just unlikely, that with the true premise, the conclusion is false.

literary devices

which are narrative techniques that add texture, energy, and excitement to the narrative, grip the reader's imagination, and convey information.

When making an inference

you are using background and observation to reach a logical conclusion; find an intended meaning and what we think the author is trying to teach us. To do this, we should first learn about the author, then study text & finally connect our response to text. By doing so, you should be able to make predictions & reach a logical conclusion about material.