Analyzing a Text

Before synthesizing information from multiple texts, you must make sure that you analyze, or
look closely, at each of those texts individually. To draw out as much information as possible
from each text, follow this series of steps:

1) Read each text very carefully, several times if necessary.

2) Identify the type of text. Is it a magazine article, a letter, a textbook, a diary, a newspaper
editorial, an academic essay, or something else?
3) Identify the text's topic. What is it talking about?
4) Identify the text's purpose. Does the text merely entertain you? Does it inform you through
a set of facts? Does it try to persuade you to accept a position or perform an action?
5) Identify the author's main idea or argument. What is the primary position or main message
that the author is presenting about the topic?
6) Identify the reasons and evidence the author uses to support or explain the main idea.
What points does the author use to justify his argument or explain his message? Does he
use facts and statistics, stories and examples, or expert testimony to support his points?
7) Clarify any unknowns about the text. Look up unfamiliar words. Research references that
are not clear.
9) Ask questions about the text and think critically about whether the main idea, reasons,
and evidence are clear, well connected, logical, and accurate.

Reading from a resistant perspective

 One that challenges the biases, prejudices or set of assumptions shared by the writer
and the society in which she/he writes.
 Resistant readings reject dominant tendencies and interpretations. Readers
reposition themselves in relation to the text by taking on an unrepresented position or
voice.
 What?
 During resistant reading, students analyze the dominant reading of a text and
“resist” it by engaging in alternative readings.
 Resistant readings study/scan the beliefs and attitudes that typically go
unexamined in a text, drawing attention to the gaps, silences and
contradictions.
 When?
 During rereading and after reading
 Why?
 A “reading” refers to what we believe the text means; textual meaning is
always dependent on context.
 A reader situated in a cultural context other than the one in which the text was
written may find meaning the writer did not intend.
 By resisting the push to read through this dominant view, students learn to
push back against these assumptions. This strategy adds the experiences of
less represented individuals and groups into the textual discourse.
 Resistant Reading combines analysis, synthesis, evaluation and creation. It
also develops and assesses comprehension, as students must understand
the text to successfully engage in an alternative reading.
 How?
  1. Choose a Perspectives text. Read the text aloud while students follow
along.
 2. Assess students’ understanding of the text. Shared Reading and Challenge
the Text provide strong comprehension strategies to lead up to Resistant
Reading. Those strategies might include asking students to:
 Answer questions about who, what, where, when, why and how
 Retell the story with details
 Determine the text's main topic or central message
 Describe characters, the setting and major events
 Identify who is telling the story
 Explain how the illustrations provide information about what is
happening in the text
 Familiarize students with two way of interpreting resistant texts.

Example of texts from a resistant perspective:

Dominant:
 people bully other person to get respected and frightened of
 Being admired and catered to can give a person a sense of superiority.
 Ones who feel superior must have, by definition, others who are inferior to them.
 To maintain that position, a bully would need to ensure that those around them are
giving them the attention and deference they believe they deserve.
Resistant:
 It is a way to make friends for them because they didn’t know how to approach other
person
 From the example, Jack seeks for social attention, recognition and acknowledgement
 He thinks that acts of aggression is a useful model to make everyone around aware
of him
 Jack is lonely and don’t have any real friends, so he tried to find attention in any way
he could - even if that means hampering someone’s mental health or causing them
physical pain as what he did to Carson