READING AND WRITING SKILLS

SECOND SEMESTER, Quarter 4, Week 1-3

What I Need to Know

Learning Competency
• Explain critical reading as reasoning (EN11/12RWS-IVac-8)
Objectives By the end of this lesson, you are expected to:

• Differentiate facts and opinions

• Determine the author’s purpose and tone
• Make inferences

What I Know
Before heading on to our lesson, let us first check what you already know.
Direction: Read the statements carefully, and determine if they are TRUE or
FALSE, then write your answers on the blanks provided before each number.

____________________1. Critical reading is simply recognition of the text’s meaning

and restating it in your own words.

____________________2. Critical reading examines the author’s choice of content,

language and structure.

____________________3. Critical reading teaches the readers to accept all the

presented facts without further examination.
____________________4. A statement of fact can be verified through experimentation,
personal observation or credible sources.

____________________5. A statement of opinion needs further evidence and other

valid supporting details to be proven true.

Direction: Can you think of the similarities and difference between critical reading and
reasoning? Try to fill this Venn Diagram with your ideas.

Lesson Critical Reading as

1 Reasoning
What’s New
• Critical reading goes beyond recognition of the text’s meaning and restating it in
your own words.
• A critical reader does not merely skim the text at hand.
 • To reach a solid interpretation of a text, the critical reader must dwell on what
the text does by making such remarks beyond what it says. From this, the critical
reader must identify what the text wholly means based on the previous analysis.
Critical reading advances the understanding of the reader by not taking the text
by its face value. It studies the composition’s every nook and cranny until you find the
author’s inconsistencies, oversights, limitations and other reasonable arguments that is
often overlooked by a normal reader.

According to the website criticalreading.com, there are three steps of analysis

reflecting the three types of reading and discussion:

1. What a text says – restatement (wherein the reader merely restates what is
said in the original text)

2. What a text does – description (wherein the reader discusses aspects of the
discussion itself)
3. What a text means – interpretation (wherein the reader analyzes the meaning
of the text as a whole).

Critical reading does not simply ask what the text says but more of how the topic
is presented and why. Critical readers dwell on the distinctive qualities of the text.
Readers normally read texts to obtain facts and knowledge. A critical reader, on the
other hand, mulls over the unique perspective of the author on a particular text and
how the facts the author presented arrived at his/her conclusion.

Goals of Critical Reading

Prentice Hall has enumerated the following critical reading skills:

1. The ability to distinguish between fact and opinion

2. The ability to identify the author’s purpose
3. The ability to make inferences
4. The ability to recognize the author’s tone
5. The ability to recognize persuasive techniques

Critical reading ultimately examines the author’s choice of content, language and
structure. The basis of recognizing the purpose of an author is their choice of content
and language to use. The critical reader analyzes the tone and persuasive elements of a
text through reviewing the choice of language used. In recognizing the bias of the text,
the critical reader must identify the nature of patterns of choice of content and
language. Critical reading teaches the reader how to not blindly accept all the
presented facts without further examination. This technique allows you to confirm and
present your own argument. The practical starting point of every critical reader is to
question everything you read.

To read critically is to make judgments about how a text is argued. This is a

highly reflective skill requiring you to stand back and gain some distance from the text
you are reading.

It is not recommended to read just to look only or primarily for information;

instead, read to look for ways of thinking about the subject matter.

What Is It
Facts versus Opinions

• A statement of fact is characterized by its ability to be verified through

experimentation, personal observation or credible sources.
• On the other hand, a statement of opinion needs further evidence and other
valid supporting details to be proven true.

Facts are statements that can be checked or proved. We can check facts by
conducting some sort of experiment, observation or by verifying (checking) the fact
with a source document.

Facts often contain numbers, dates or ages and facts might include specific
information about a person, place or thing.

An opinion, on the other hand, is a statement that cannot be proved or checked.

It tells what someone thinks, feels or believes.

Clue words for opinion statements are: think, believe, seem, always, never,
most, least, worse, greatest.

To recognize a fact or an opinion, ask yourself, “Can this statement be proved?”.

If your answer is YES, then that statement is a fact; if your ANSWER is NO, then that
statement is an opinion.

Author’s Purpose and Tone

• An author’s purpose is his reason for or intent in writing. An author’s purpose

may be to amuse the reader, to persuade the reader or to inform him.
• An author’s purpose is reflected in his tone.
• Tone reflects the author’s attitude in approaching the topic. According to Forlini,
―an author chooses words according to his/her attitude toward the topic and
how the author expects the reader to respond to the material.
 Purpose is the reason an author writes about a topic. An author may have a
more specific purpose in mind other than to inform, entertain or persuade him. To
figure out the author’s purpose, you as the reader, must consider the main idea,
thought pattern and tone.

The author’s tone, on the other hand, may be evident in his/her choice of words either
expressing its connotation or denotation.

The author uses various persuasive techniques to color the presentation of facts
and to appeal to the reader. Authors use jargons and slanting to make the readers lean
towards their position/argument.

• Jargons are ―specialized vocabulary used by people in a particular field. While

often misused to conceal meaning, jargons may prove effective in solidifying an
argument if defined and explained appropriately.
• Slanting ―is the writing of a passage so that it leans toward one point of view.‖
Words with either positive or negative connotations may be used as slanting.
Another example of slanting is purposefully leaving out information of a different
perspective on a similar issue. Analyzing a Written Text

In analyzing a written text, it is important to take note of the following elements

as well as the guide questions that come with it:

• Purpose/Context – What does the text aim to do? Does it mean to persuade or
does it contribute to a discussion of an existing topic? What content does the
text cover? What purpose does it serve its readers?
• Author/s – Who wrote the text? What are his qualifications for writing about the
topic?
• Audience – What is its target audience? Where is the text found? What does the
author expect the reader to get from his/her composition? Are you a part of the
author’s audience?
• Topic and Position – Is the author’s argument on the topic at hand supported by
valid evidence? Is the author’s position clear? Is it presented as objective? Is
his/her stand based on other author’s position or simply from personal
observation/experience?
• Research/Sources – Do previous researches have a role in supporting the
author’s argument? Which of the references elicits further discussion?
• Proof/Evidence – What are the proofs/evidence presented by the author
throughout the text? Did they come from credible sources? What type of proof is
used by the author (e.g. references to other work, interpretations of other work,
original research, personal experience, author’s opinions, critical analysis, etc.)?
 Do these proofs validate the argument? Which of the evidence carries the most
weight?
• Organization – How are the information organized in the text? For what
particular reason are they arranged in this particular way? Where did the author
plainly states his/her stand on the topic? Is the organization driven more by the
content (the information that needs to be presented), by the authors' argument,
by the needs of the audience, or by some combination of the three?

• Style – What can you infer from the author’s choice of words? From what
perspective did the author write the text? Was he/she inclusive with his/her
choice of words? Did they use jargons or slanted meanings? If there are, were
they properly defined for the reader’s convenience and understanding? What
other writing techniques did the author apply in writing the text? Analyze each
sentence structure, figurative language and rhetorical questions existing in the
text.
• Drawing Conclusions – What does the author want to highlight? Compare and
contrast the text with other similar ones. Identify the similarities and differences
in their approach of the same topic.
Making Inferences

• An inference is an idea or conclusion that’s drawn from evidence and reasoning.

• An inference is an educated guess.
• When you are making an inference, you are reading between the lines or just
looking carefully at the facts and coming to conclusions.
The text, by itself, does not contain meaning. It is up to the reader to interpret
the meaning of the words, their usage and structure in the text. The reader infers an
interpretation of the text through prior knowledge, social conventions, shared
experience or shared values.

Inferences are essential in both written and spoken communication. A single

sentence may contain a variety of assertions. Reading is ―an active, reflective,
problem-solving process.‖ Readers do not simply read the words, but ideas from a
collection of assertions.

Some examples of inferences are the following:

• A boy is wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, glasses, and his shoes have mud on
them. One can infer he likes Led Zeppelin, his eyesight is poor and he walked
through mud.
• You adopt a puppy from the shelter and he seems nervous and scared. He hides
from loud noises and had some noticeable scars.
You can infer that he was abused by his former owner.

What I Have Learned

Remember!
• Critical reading goes beyond recognition of the text’s meaning and restating
it in your own words.
• A critical reader must be able to do the following
a. Distinguish between fact and opinion
b. Identify the author’s purpose
c. Make inferences
d. Recognize the author’s tone
e. Recognize persuasive techniques.

Activity 1

Direction: Let’s try if you can infer where I am and what I am doing, and what can
you infer about the feelings of the people in the situations that I’ll be giving you. The
first one has been done for you.

Example:

Can you infer where I am and what I’m doing?

I see bubbles rising. I hear my own breathing. There are fish swimming above
me. I feel the seaweed swaying.

Answer: Scuba diving in the sea!

Now, it’s your turn!

1. Can you infer where I am?

It’s so dark in here. What’s that spooky sound? Oh I feel somebody on my back!
I’m getting nervous. Answer: _________________
2. Can you infer where I am?
I hear the crowd cheer as the ball gets inside the ring. The players whop with
glee.

Answer: _____________________
3. What can you infer from this?
 Rey always carries his guitar with him.
Answer: _____________________
4. What can you infer about Anna’s father?
After Anna broke the vase, her father turned and walked away without saying
anything.
Answer: _____________________
5. What can you infer about the relationship of the speaker and whom she is
speaking to?
If you won’t go, I won’t either.
Answer: _____________________

Assessment
After our lesson, let us now check what you have learned.

Direction: Read the statements carefully, and determine if they are TRUE or
FALSE, then write your answers on the blanks provided before each number.

____________________1. Critical reading is simply recognition of the text’s meaning

and restating it in your own words.

____________________2. Critical reading examines the author’s choice of content,

language and structure.

____________________3. Critical reading teaches the readers to accept all the

presented facts without further examination.

____________________4. A statement of fact can be verified through experimentation,

personal observation or credible sources.

____________________5. A statement of opinion needs further evidence and other

valid supporting details to be proven true.

References
Analyzing a written text.
Retrieved from: https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/co301aman/pop7b3.c fm
Inference reading.