Reading to write: Understanding texts

Reading to understand starts with knowing why you are reading. Before you look closely at any text, ask three quick questions: who made this, who is it for, and what is it trying to do? A news report on a local flood, a short story about a stormy night and a council brochure about sandbagging might all mention water, yet each has a different purpose.

The report informs, the story entertains and moves the reader, and the brochure instructs and persuades residents to act. Literary texts (stories, poems, scripts, memoirs) usually create an imagined or personal experience. Non-literary texts (articles, reports, speeches, advertisements, instructions) usually deliver information or argue a position. Many texts blend the two, so treat the labels as a starting point rather than a rule.

Good comprehension strategies make your reading active. Preview the title, headings, images and opening lines to predict the topic. Read in chunks and pause to summarise each chunk in one sentence. Annotate by underlining key words, circling unfamiliar vocabulary and writing a short note in the margin about the point being made. Use context clues to work out hard words: look at the words around them, at prefixes and suffixes, and at examples the writer supplies.

Ask questions as you go, such as why the writer included this detail. Finally, reread the opening and ending, because writers often place the main idea in the first paragraph and restate it in the last.

The main idea is the central point a text keeps returning to. Supporting information is the evidence, examples, statistics or events that develop it. To find the main idea, look for repeated words, topic sentences at the start of paragraphs and the concluding statement. Texts also arrive in different modes and mediums. Mode refers to how meaning is made, such as written, spoken, visual or multimodal (a combination).

Medium is the channel, such as a printed page, a podcast, a website or a short film. A podcast depends on tone of voice and pauses, while a website can combine headings, photos and links. Notice how the medium shapes what the audience pays attention to.