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Comprehending Complex Texts. Why? You will read a wide range of texts in many academic disciplines as preparation for college and the workplace. Comprehending Complex Texts. What? A complex text is a work that contains challenging vocabulary, long, complex sentences,
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Comprehending Complex Texts • Why? You will read a wide range of texts in many academic disciplines as preparation for college and the workplace.
Comprehending Complex Texts • What? A complex text is a work that contains • challenging vocabulary, • long, complex sentences, • figurative language, • multiple levels of meaning, or • unfamiliar settings and situations
Comprehending Complex Texts • There are 3 strategies for comprehending a complex text: • Strategy 1: Multidraft Reading • Strategy 2: Close Read the Text • Strategy 3: Ask Questions
Comprehending Complex Texts Strategy 1: Mulitdraft Reading • 1st Reading: • Basic Meaning • Who, What, When, Where (Plot elements) • Why (conflicts are they resolved?) • Nonfiction text: read for main ideas • Poetry: identify speaker, setting, and subject
Comprehending Complex Texts Strategy 1: Mulitdraft Reading • 2nd Reading: • Artistry and effectiveness of writing • Text structures (organizational patterns) • Author’s use of figurative language • Effect of author’s writing style
Comprehending Complex Texts Strategy 1: Mulitdraft Reading • 3rd Reading: • Compare/Contrast text with others • Evaluate the text’s overall effectiveness • Evaluate its central idea or theme
Comprehending Complex Texts • Strategy 2: Close Read the Text • To comprehend a complex text, perform a close reading – a careful analysis of the words, phrases, and sentences within the text. As you close read, use the following tips to increase your understanding.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Tip 1 – Break down long sentences into parts. • Look for the subject of the sentence and its ver. Then, identify which parts of the sentence modify, or give more information about, its subject.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Tip 2 – Reread passages. • When reading complex texts, re-read difficult passages to make sure that you understand their meaning.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Tip 3 – Look for context clues. Such as: • Restatement of an idea. • Definition of sophisticated words. • Examples of concepts and topics. • Contrasts of ideas and topics.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Tip 4 – Identify pronoun antecedents. • If long sentences or passages contain pronouns, reread the text to make sure you know to what or whom the pronouns refer.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Tip 5 – Look for conjunctions. • Such as and, or, and yet, to understand relationships between ideas.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Tip 6 – Paraphrase. • Restate in your own words, challenging passages in order to check your understanding. Remember that a paraphrase is a word-for-word rephrasing of an original text; it is not a summary.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Strategy 3- Ask Questions • In order to become an attentive reader it is important to ask questions before we read, while we read, and after we read. There are three different types of questions that a reader should ask as they comprehend a complex text.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Key Ideas and Details • In order to answer these types of questions it is important to pay attention to the explicit information in the text and also be able to draw inferences from the text.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Craft and Structure • These types of questions will force the reader to analyze hoe the author developed and structured the text. The reader will also look for ways the author artfully used language and how these language choices impacted the meaning and tone of the work.
Comprehending Complex Texts • Integration of Knowledge and Ideas • These types of questions will force the reader to look deeply at the text and construct answers to critical thinking questions. Some of these questions will include comparing texts, analyzing arguments in the text, and other methods of thinking critically about a text’s ideas.
Comprehending Complex Texts • On your own • As you read on your own it is important to ask yourself these types of questions. Most of the time in your text book and novels read in school the teacher will provide these types of questions for you, but in order to fully comprehend a text these are the types of questions one must use.