What is the topic of the article what clues does the

What is the topic of the article?
What clues does the title give away about this topic?
Why might the author(s) have written about this topic?
What do I already know about this topic?
What questions should this article ideally answer?
What kinds of characteristics might an effective article on this topic include?
What experiences have I had with this topic?
Making Connections
The heart of connecting to a text as a reader is to relate something in the text to previous experiences or
events. This strategy is helpful before reading, but it can also be done during and after reading. Readers can
make at least three kinds of connections:
1. Text-to-self: These are connections between the text’s topic and personal experiences.
2. Text-to-world: These are connections between the text’s topic and events, phenomenon, or happenings
in society.
3. Text-to-text: These are connections between the text and previously read texts.
Exercise 6
Return to the article analyzed earlier. Write down a list of text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text
connections within the article. Consider the following: Did you expect to make connections to the text?
What did you discover by exploring these connections?
Considering Purpose, Author, and Structure
One of the most important strategies effective readers use is to consider purpose, author, and structure.
These make up the rhetorical purpose of the written work. When a student understands the purpose of a
text, specifically the writer’s goals, background, and intentions, as well as the structure of a text, it is much
easier to read and compose texts.

3/1/2019 Writing with Purpose
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Effective readers must also consider audience and genre. Audience is the intended viewers or listeners of a
text. Genre is a type or category of a text. For example, a commentary is one genre of writing, and a
rhetorical analysis is a different genre of writing. Readers must be aware of the expectations of a given
audience and genre. An essay written for a professor will look and sound different from a letter written to a
politician.
Consider this example. A text message sent to a friend about meeting for lunch has a different rhetorical
purpose than an article a journalist writes for a newspaper. A friend might be writing to connect, and a
journalist might be writing to persuade. The authors have chosen different formats and audiences with whom
to share their messages. The authors have different credentials and experiences, which also shift the
rhetorical purpose of their writing.
During-Reading Strategies
Because reading is a short-lived experience that primarily uses one sensory organ, it is often difficult to
remember what one has read. Annotating is a strategy that helps readers interact with a text. Annotating is
the act of commenting, marking, highlighting, and adding notes to a document. Rather than the reader
reading a text and hoping to remember what was read, annotating gives the reader the opportunity to
experience the text and effectively teach the material to him or herself.