Description: Describing What a Text Does

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Description: Describing What a Text Does

Read an essay about AIDS, and you think about AIDS. But you can also think about the essay. Does it discuss preventive strategies or medical treatments? Or both? Does it describe AIDS symptoms or offer statistics? Is the disease presented as a contagious disease, a Biblical scourge, or an individual experience? What evidence is relied on? Does it quote medical authorities or offer anecdotes from everyday people? Does it appeal to reason or emotions? These are not questions about what a textsays, but about what the textdoes.They are not about AIDS, but aboutthe discussionof AIDS.

This second level of reading is concerned not only with understanding individual remarks, but also with recognizing the structure of a discussion. We examine what a text does to convey ideas. We might read this way to understand how an editorial justifies a particular conclusion, or how a history text supports a particular interpretation of events.

At the previous level of reading, restatement, we demonstrated comprehension by repeating the thought of the text. Here we are concerned with describing the discussion:

what topics are discussed?
what examples and evidence are used?
what conclusions are reached?

We want to recognize and describe how evidence is marshaled to reach a final position, rather than simply follow remarks from sentence to sentence.

This level of reading looks at broad portions of the text to identify the structure of the discussion as a whole. On completion, we can not only repeat what the text says, but can also describe what the text does. We can identify how evidence is used and how the final points are reached.