Some views about literary texts

What do we read?

Every day we read a variety of text-types without, perhaps, even realizing that they are

texts. The newspaper you read in the morning, the billboard with an ad for a movie, the instructions on your bottle of shampoo, the rate-chart at the Metro station, the e-mail from your friend, the SMS you sent, or the prospectus for college that you bought – all these are examples of text types.

In addition we also read charts, diagrams, cartoons or photographs which accompany texts.

Why do we read?

We read primarily to seek information or increase our knowledge. People also read for

pleasure, to communicate with other people, or to seek inspiration from religious texts. There is a wide spectrum of reasons, ranging from the purely functional to the religious or spiritual.

How do we read?

There are various ways in which a text can be read, depending on your intention.

Linguists have classified reading strategies into four major kinds. If you are searching for some information, as when you are going through a railway time-table, you read quickly and focus only on what you need. This is scanning. When you read a chapter of a book in your course with the aim to understand everything it is intensive reading but if you read a newspaper article quickly just to get the general idea it is skimming. If you go through an entire novel, without being bothered by things you don’t understand and because you enjoy reading fiction, it is extensive reading. The main requisite for reading comprehension is to develop the ability to read a passage without failing to grasp the general meaning of the text. The aim of the text book is to provide you with a wide variety of authentic texts and sensitize you to differences in style. You must learn not only to pay attention to what is said but how it is said. Other skills that help you understand the text are the ability to deduce meanings of unfamiliar words, recognize the writer’s technique and evaluate writing in terms of organization, aim, function, and writer’s intention.