Homepage --> Room 82 --> Reading Expository Prose

Reading Expository Text (Textbooks, Essays, Articles, Reports, Workplace Documents)

Reading books is good, reading good books is better.

---Lawrence Clark Powell

Rationale

Expository text makes up the bulk of what we read. In school this is no different. Thus students need to know how such texts work, how they should prepare to read them, and what to do once they begin reading such texts. Expository texts include essays, speeches, lab procedures, journals, government documents, newspaper and magazine articles, and directions, among other things. While each type of text shares certain characteristics with the others, they each make their own demands on the reader through the unique use of structure, devices, features, and conventions. We need to teach students how to read each type as they encounter it if they are to read them successfully. To fully appreciate all that a reader of such texts does read the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory's rubric for informational texts in the appendix.

What to Do

First, students need to understand the characteristics of an expository text. A narrative text includes such elements as a theme, plot, conflict(s), resolution, characters, and a setting. Expository texts, on the other hand, explain something by definition, sequence, categorization, comparison-contrast, enumeration, process, problem-solution, description, or cause-effect. Where the narrative text uses story to inform and persuade, the expository text uses facts and details, opinions and examples to do the same. John Steinbeck used narrative to describe what it was like for people during the Dust Bowl, but an economist would use exposition to explain the causes and consequences of the same event, drawing examples from various sources to illustrate his points, perhaps even including a graph or some photographs.

Depending on the goal of the reading, teachers can help students better understand how expository texts work and read them more effectively by teaching them how to:

• identify the elements of a paragraph and read them
• recognize the transitional words that signal important information or a shift in focus
• establish the genre---e.g., cause-effect, definition, persuasive
• organize the information within an expository text into an outline for subsequent analysis
• annotate such texts for a specified purpose
• summarize paragraphs or sections of the text as they read along
• pre-read these texts according to the current purpose
• use available information such as subheadings to orient and focus their reading
• identify the main ideas throughout the text
• develop their own questions and apply them to the text
• create their own study guides
• take effective notes for subsequent discussions or writing assignments

Follow These Steps When Reading an Essay or Article

• Read and consider the title.
• Find the author's name and any other information about the writer.
• Identify the source (i.e., the original publication and date) of the article.
• Read the introduction or opening paragraphs carefully, checking these against the title.
• Skim through the article and read all boldface subheadings, pull out quotes, or sidebar information.
• Skim through the article and read the first sentence of each paragraph; if this sentence is clearly not the topic sentence, locate and read the topic sentence.
• Examine any other typographical features such as italicized words.
• Examine any graphic content (e.g., maps, illustrations, images)
• Read the last paragraph carefully.
• Study any questions or additional information provided at the end of the article.
• Read the entire article, keeping in mind what you have gained from your pre-reading and checking your new understanding against the initial understanding, revising as needed.

Student Example

Students understand better what they themselves learn to make; thus students can read such workplace or other practical expository documents as freshman Erin Johnson's proposal below because, by making their own, they learn how they work.

Special Olympics

As we become more and more aware of the problems around us, steps should be taken to prevent these problems from having tragic consequences. In the culture we now live, status is based almost completely on what we look like, how we act, or how "perfect" we are. For most people, coping skills are developed enough that these standards don’t mater quite as much. But when you're physically or mentally different it can be especially hard to grasp the unreal-ness of these standards. For some people who have mental or physical disabilities the problem may not be grasping the situation of perfect-ness, but the fact that they feel left out and think that outside their special classes there is no place for them to go and just hang out.

In this report I hope that I will be able to demonstrate the significance of the Special Olympics through the minds and hearts of the participants, volunteers, and parents of these special people. A few questions I intend to answer are:

• Why do kids participate in the Special Olympics?
• What needs are participants attempting to meet through participation in the Special Olympics
• How are the athletes recruited?
• If athletics have inherent values for students, shouldn’t schools provide equal opportunities for all students?
• I know that my investigation will turn up many different answers, but I know that all answers will show the significance of the Special Olympics.

In addition to reading newspaper articles and magazines, I plan to do the following:

• Interview participants, volunteers and parents
• Contact the local Special Olympic committee and see if I can interview a representative
• Create a documentary based on the interview of some people, clips from Special Olympic advertisement tapes, and other clips related to the subject
• Search the internet for information and use the public library system

I am aware of how time consuming this project is going to be so I am taking steps to prepare myself for it. I have decided that I am going to break it down into days setting goals that I need to have completed each day. I am also aware that if I do decide to make the documentary I will have give up, or leave after school practice’s early so that I will have a better chance of getting the video done. Because some of the people I will be interviewing live in Washington I will have to spend time organizing my schedule so that I can talk to them over the internet, or by phone.

If my project is a success I should be able to answer this question: what is the significance of the Special Olympics to its participants?

The information on this page comes from Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques, by Jim Burke. If you are interested in learning more about this book or ordering it, click here.