English Language Notes- Understanding Texts

Section 2 -English Language-Reading-Understanding Texts

Information and ideas can be explicit or implicit:

Explicit is when information is clearly stated in the text e.g. Last weekend, it was sunny. From this explicit fact, the text states that it was sunny last weekend so we know that it is.

Implicit is when information needs a little more inference and it is not clearly stated for us in the text. e.g. The castle was dark, decrepit and freezing cold. In this sentence, it is implied that the author isn't very fond of the castle although it isn't directly stated to the reader - you have to infer information about his feelings.

The first thing that you need to be able to do in order to analyse a text is to understand the basic information it's conveying to you. For example, if it states that it is raining-explicit-we know that it is raining and we can easily understand that. This will allow you to pick up easily accountable marks fro paper 1, question 1 and paper 2, question 1. The information/ideas that you'll identify/pick out from the text will either be explicit or implicit - you can state this in your essay.

Highlight or underline the relevant facts as you read the text so for example, if the question asked you to list four things from this part of the text about Brian's school you'd do this:

[ If a question asks you to LIST something, all you need to do is find the information in the text - no analysis is needed. The facts that you use in your answer must come from the part of the text mentioned in the question. As you read te relevant part, underline the facts that you will use…