Text types and the purpose for writing
Students need to understand purpose and audience so that they can make decisions about how they read or write a text.
Common text types found in years 9–13 are explanations, arguments, procedures/instructions, and narratives.
Explanations
Explanations are used in most subject areas to explain information, ideas, and concepts. They can often be found in reports, essays, textbooks, newspapers, and Internet articles.
They are usually written with headings and titles that signal the main ideas to be explained in the whole text and in each section. Additional important information is often provided in diagrams, tables, and other visual information.
Some textbooks (for example, science and maths textbooks) contain explanation that are followed by procedures/instructions. Students can read all of the information or choose sections appropriate to their needs. They can work out the main ideas in the text by using the headings and subheadings.
Arguments
Arguments are also used in most subject areas but are less common than explanations. They are used to argue an opinion on an issue that is of interest to readers. They can often be found in essays, editorials, and advertisements.
They usually have a title or heading and often have a sub-heading that gives the reader some indication of the author’s opinion on the issue. The author’s opinion is supported by evidence that can include statistics, quotes from experts, and personal experiences. Students should read the whole text to identify the opinion and supporting evidence.
Procedures/instructions
Procedures/instructions are commonly used in all subject areas where students need to follow written instructions. They can often be found in assessment guidelines, textbooks, and recipes
They contain steps or lists and very few paragraphs of information. They need to be read in the order they are laid out. Students often need to reread parts of the text as they follow the instructions.
Narratives
Narratives are most common in English and other language subjects where students read stories. They can be found in novels, short stories, poems, and sometimes essays that contain characters, setting, plot, and theme.
Readers must carefully read all of the text in a narrative. When an anecdote (a very short narrative often of someone’s experience) is included with another text type such as an explanation, it may be simply to catch the reader’s interest. In such cases, the anecdote is usually less important.
For more about text types see Features of text forms .
Before students read a new text on an unfamiliar topic, they should take a few minutes to preview the information that is available from the text features to increase their background knowledge of the topic.
Ask the students:
- What type of text has this author used?
- Who is the intended audience?
- What is the purpose of the text?/Why has the author used these text features?
- What text features do you see that tells you this?
- Which features tell you the most important information?
- What do you know about the topic from reading all of the information in the text features?
Using the profiles
Students in all of the profiles will benefit from learning about the different text types in the context of their reading and writing. We suggest you record what the students are learning about text types as a reference.
Profile 1 students are likely to answer with single pieces of information or a list of ideas. They will need modelling, practice, and feedback that teaches them to locate, gather, and combine related pieces of information from the different text features. You may need to ask additional questions that refer them to the features and structure, for example, What evidence is this author using to support their opinion? What are these headings doing? How should we use these instructions?
Profile 1 and 2 students should record their previews to help them think about what they are learning from the text. Previewing may be slow to begin but with practice it should take only 5 minutes for two or three pages of text.
Profile 3 students may not need much instruction on previewing. However, it is important that they see the usefulness of finding the main ideas from their preview. This will help them to understand what information is important to emphasise when making notes. They should write some of their previews to keep them focused on important content and to think about the main ideas.
This is discussed further in the subject area modules ( Previewing in technology, Previewing in science, Previewing in social studies).
Teaching your students to locate information and make connections in texts
Most students can locate literal information. It is often highlighted, written at the start of a paragraph or shown on a diagram. However, other important information is less accessible.
These three steps provide a useful way to begin teaching students to use deeper reading skills, such as inference and synthesis. To use these skills, students would learn to:
- Locate and use the literal or easily accessed information (as evidence) from the text.
- Combine related and relevant pieces of information from the text asking themselves: “What does this now mean?” and then “What can I now say on this basis?”
- Combine this information from the text with prior knowledge they have of the topic asking: “Am I certain the prior knowledge is accurate or reasonable?”, “How can I be sure?”, “What do I need to check?”.
Students will need explicit teaching and multiple learning opportunities to practice these skills.
You can:
- Ask carefully selected questions that require students to use evidence to find their answers. Sometimes have them write the answers to the questions and also identify the evidence they used.
- Model the process identifying the steps and the evidence information.
Listen for and capitalise on times when students use these skills by asking: “Do you know how you decided/learned that?”, “What information did you use?”
Previewing the text feature information
Text features are used to help organise the sections of text and present information visually. Text features may differ according to the text type and purpose, and by the subject context. Some examples of text features are:
- titles
- headings and sub-headings
- maps
- diagrams
- illustrations
- photographs and/or video clips
- use of symbols or mathematical, scientific or technological representations
- font size and type
- tables
- text boxes.
The information contained in text features needs to be readily accessible to students.
Research tells us that when readers begin reading, any accurate background knowledge helps them to make sense of the material and learn new concepts. However, at secondary school level, students often read about unfamiliar topics.
By previewing the text feature information before they begin to read the more densely written paragraph information students can increase their prior knowledge of the topic. Use the framework for analysing the subject-based language demands of a text in your planning.
Teaching your students to use subject specific and academic vocabulary
Strategies include:
Looking for clues
Teach these clues to the students in the context of their reading. The clues will help them become more independent in learning the vocabulary and more confident in using it:
- appositives – definitions of words contained within the sentence
- context clues – found in the surrounding text features, sentences, the paragraph, the whole text
- morphemic clues – the prefixes, suffixes, and word roots.
Ask students to preview and read sections of the text without providing the definitions of the important vocabulary. Following their previews and reading ask:
- What word meanings did you need to problem solve?
- What do you think they mean?
- How did you work that out?
Once students have had the opportunity to problem solve the words they encounter in the reading, work as a whole class to create a glossary of the words they need to know
Building vocabulary
Use vocabulary building strategies to provide opportunities for them to learn and remember the important vocabulary as required.
Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13 Effective Literacy Strategies in Years 9 to 13 pages 44-45 (PDF 130KB) describes strategies that can help students recall and use new vocabulary.
Provide opportunities for practice
Provide frequent opportunities throughout the unit of work for students to practise using the vocabulary through quickwrites when they are required to express the abstract concepts of the subject.
All students will benefit when you follow a question asking, ‘What does ____ mean?’ with ‘How did you work that out?’
Student profiles
- Profile 1 students may rely on teachers for explanation of word meanings and have low expectations of understanding the information they read. They need many opportunities to learn and use the different clues. Gradually introduce and chart how to work out meanings with context and morphemes and model this process for them.
- Profile 2 students may have the skills to use context clues but need opportunities to use them and an expectation of success. As these students may be reluctant to write, it will be useful to ask them to record the meanings they are working out to build their skills and confidence in meaning making. You want this to become automatic in-the-head behaviour, so gradually reduce the number of times that you ask this.
Profile 3 students will easily understand and apply vocabulary problem solving strategies. These are likely to be students who already read and make sense of text with a good degree of independence and probably use these skills intuitively. Making these strategies explicit will build their skills further.
Quickwrites
Quickwrites are short, independent writing exercises that help students to:
- apply the subject specific and academic language to express their thinking and learning
- organise the new ideas and knowledge they are learning
- respond to specific writing tasks.
Teaching your students to use quickwrites
Ask students to carefully read the question/prompt and then write their response. Emphasise that this writing is to help them think and use the knowledge and vocabulary they are learning in the subject area.
You will need to:
- decide on the prompt/question that will guide your students to think about important learning and use the language of the topic
- decide what kind of response you want, for example, whether you ask them to explain, describe, or justify
- provide feedback to students to scaffold their quickwriting skills.
- They will not need to receive written feedback on every quickwrite. Students could select one in every three or four for your comments.
Student profiles
- Profile 1 and 2 students may not be confident writers, so quickwrites will be important for building their stamina and fluency in conveying and grappling with unfamiliar ideas. You may need to begin by modelling quickwrites.
Profile 3 students may need practice at formulating the main points they want to communicate, so responding to the quickwrite prompt will be useful. They may need feedback on the accuracy and identification of key information and how to eliminate any unnecessary detail.
Writing tasks
In most classes, students are expected to write to communicate what they have learned. They may need to write a response to literature, a research report, an evaluation, or make some notes.
Students may need scaffolding to:
- look carefully at the task and what it requires them to do
- decide what text type they will use depending on their purpose (to argue, explain)
- identify the features of the text type
- decide whether they are writing for their own thinking/learning, making notes for future reference, or to communicate and present information
- decide how they will organise or structure their writing
- understand the features of that structure.
Student profiles
All students will benefit from making links to prior knowledge. Ask profile 1 and 2 students to record this prior learning to help them to focus on the requirements of the task.