Non-Fiction Reading

Lesson 1: Genre,
Audience and Purpose
 Learning Objective
To gain an overview of the reading skills for non-fiction texts.

Success Criteria
• To define non-fiction texts.
• To understand the reading skills needed to analyse non-fiction texts.
• To identify the genre, audience and purpose of a text.
 Stranger Than Fiction
• With a partner, write definitions for the words fiction and non-fiction.
• Using the definitions you have created, sort the types of text below into
fiction or non-fiction.

Fiction
play Non-fiction
autobiography novel
Could any of these text types
play autobiography appear in both categories?
Can you give an example?
novel diary
diary film review
poem film review
poem advertisement
advertisement newspaper article
newspaper article
 What’s the
Difference?
Fiction texts are based on the author’s
imagination. The characters, settings and
stories in works of fiction can be
completely invented by the writer. Fiction
works can include novels, plays and poetry.

Non-fiction texts are based on fact.

The information contained in
non-fiction texts is true (from the
writer’s perspective, at least) and the
people and places really exist.
Non-fiction covers a huge range of genres
including autobiographies, magazine
articles, newspaper reports, recipes and
many others.
 Mind the GAP
When you’re given a piece of non-fiction to read, your starting point should
always be to identify three things:
● Genre - what type of text is it?

This might be a newspaper or magazine article, a letter, an advertisement

or a speech, for example.
● Audience - who is the text aimed at?

This could be a particular age group or people with a particular

occupation or interest.
● Purpose - what did the writer want to achieve when they wrote it?

Are they trying to argue, persuade, inform or entertain the reader? (They
could be doing more than one of these at once.)

Once you’ve identified the GAP, you will know why the text was written and
what the writer wanted to achieve. You can then think in more detail about
how they achieve it and how successful they are.
 What Do I Need to Know?
The following non-fiction reading skills are the key objectives.

• Identifying and interpreting information and ideas.

This means finding information from a text and showing that you
understand it.
• Analysing how writers use language and structure to achieve effects
and influence readers.
This means explaining why the writer has chosen their language and how
it creates a particular effect on the reader.
• Comparing writers’ ideas and perspectives.
This means looking at two or more texts and comparing their points
of view.
• Evaluating texts critically.
This means giving your opinion on how successful a writer has been at
conveying their ideas to the reader.
 Fill In the GAPs
Have a go at identifying the audience and purpose of some texts yourself.
There could be more than one possible audience and purpose for each one;
try to be as specific as possible about who the texts would appeal to and why
they would be written.

Extension

What do you think the tone of each text would be? Would it be serious or
light-hearted? Formal or informal?

Tone
The way the writer expresses their
attitude towards the subject or
audience of a text.
July 22, 2016
Why Singapore’s kids are so good at maths
The city-state regularly tops global league tables. What’s the secret of its achievement?
Sie Yu Chuah smiles when asked how his parents would react to a low test score. “My parents
are not that strict but they have high expectations of me,” he says. “I have to do well. Excel at
my studies. That’s what they expect from me.” The cheerful, slightly built 13-year-old is a pupil
at Admiralty, a government secondary school in the northern suburbs of Singapore that opened
in 2002.
At meetings of the world’s education ministers, when it is Singapore’s turn to speak, “everyone
listens very closely”, says Andreas Schleicher, head of the OECD’s education assessment
programme.
But what is it about Singapore’s system that enables its children to outperform their
international peers? And how easy will it be for other countries to import its success?
A densely populated speck of land in Southeast Asia, Singapore is bordered by Malaysia to the
north and the leviathan archipelago of Indonesia to the south. The former British trading post
gained self-rule in 1959 and was briefly part of a Malaysian federation before becoming fully
independent in 1965. A sense of being dwarfed by vast neighbours runs deep in the national
psyche, inspiring both fear and pride. In a speech to trade union activists on May Day last year,
prime minister Lee Hsien Loong told citizens: “To survive, you have to be exceptional.” The
alternative, he warned, was being “pushed around, shoved about, trampled upon; that’s the end
of Singapore and the end of us”.
The Financial Times, Jeevan Vasagar
Analysis
This article:
 uses the headline to make a direct statement, “Why Singapore’s
kids are so good at maths” – the purpose of the report is to
explain why
 the language “global” league tables highlights the international
success – followed by a rhetorical question, “What’s the secret of
its achievement?” to interest the reader
 the conversational tone avoids being too formal, eg “kids” and
“what’s the secret” – the audience might be parents as well as
educational experts
 more rhetorical questions prepare the reader for “answers”
provided by the report
 a metaphor “speck of land” makes Singapore sound tiny – the
reader is even more amazed at its huge success – and its tiny size
is reinforced by the description that it is “dwarfed” by its
neighbours.
 imperative language from its Prime Minister explains the efforts
behind the brilliant maths results, “You have to be exceptional”
 the extract ends with a rule of three,
“pushed around, shoved about, trampled upon” – the
aggressive verbs imply the struggle Singapore students face if
they do not achieve highly at school.
 Plenary
Summarise what you have learned about genre,
audience and purpose; formal and
informal ;language and structural devises in
your own words, providing examples for each
one.