LECTURE 1

ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES

✓ Text - “any stretch of language larger than a sentence, whether spoken or written, and having a logically consistent and
unified structure,” (Collins & Hollo, 2000).
✓ Discourse - sequence of utterances used in a given context
Types of Discourse:
• Exposition – inform and explain; appeals to intellect
• Description – describes using adjectives to create sensory and visual images
• Narration – tells stories or series of events; appeal to emotion
• Argumentation – convince the reader; encourages the reader to make an action
✓ Academic Text - product of communication or piece of language used for academic purposes or in relation to academic
courses.

Text Structures:
✓ ABC (Abstract-Body-Conclusion) - begins with an abstract which is the gist or summary of the whole text; the reader will still
get all the important ideas even without reading the body and conclusion
✓ IBC (Introduction-Body-Conclusion) - introduction introduces the topic to the readers; the topic is explained and elaborated
in the body; conclusion is where the writer restates the main idea/topic, summarizes the whole text, or wraps up the discussion

✓ Thesis Statement – “What is the text all about?”; the declarative sentence that contains the controlling idea of the whole text

✓ Critical Reading - when the reader interacts with the text; active process of discovery because as you analyze a text, you are
also interacting with the writer; interaction is when you question and evaluate the writer’s statements in the text and when you
comment on the ideas in the text
Critical Reading Strategies:
• Annotating - the practice of marking the pages with notes; it can be underlining, highlighting, or encircling important
words and phrases, or writing personal notes on the margins of the text
• Outlining - framework that contains the main ideas of a text listed down using letter and numbers
• Summarizing - a more condensed and shorter version of the original text but still containing all the major ideas
• Paraphrasing - restating statements using your own words

✓ Reaction Paper - informative and insightful perspective on art, popular culture, and the world; a reasoned and reasonable
response to the world, but still uses facts and statistics as basis for expressing the writer’s opinion of the topic
Literary Criticism Approaches:
• Formalist Approach - a criticism that focuses on the technicalities of the work
• Historical Approach - focuses on the work’s connection to the social, political, and economic aspects during when
the text was written, and its representation of real events in history
• Gender Approach - discusses the dynamics of society-assigned gender roles, equality, oppression, dominance,
submission and stereotypes
• Mythological/Archetypal Approach - observes the archetypes and symbolism which are found in the stories and
myths, and the underlying meaning they signify
• Marxist Approach - focuses on the social classes presented in the work and the impact of these social classes to
the other elements in the work
• Psychoanalytical Approach – focuses on the factors that affects human behavior and thinking
• Sociological Approach - focus is on the existing societal issues that affect or control the society
• Moral-Philosophical Approach - taps the ethical, religious, and humanistic aspects of the subject
• Reader’s Response Approach - focuses on the personal interpretation and opinion of the reader / audience about
the story, object, or idea being criticized