0:00
Alright, we've thought about audience we've thought about purpose. Now where do we go? Well, we go to content. So let's ask questions about content. First question, what are the author's major assertions or findings? Second question, how does the author support these assertions or findings? Alright, now that we have the questions, let's look at these in detail and see what's happening behind the scenes. When examining the content of any reading, try first to locate the author's thesis and then paraphrase it. A thesis statement will be either stated or implied. So if it stated, you will be able to point to a sentence or two in the reading that serves as the thesis if it's implied, a general idea or argument unites and guides the writing, but the author never explicitly puts it into words. When you paraphrase this general idea or argument, this unstated thesis, you thereby also identify the thesis because you give it form, you move it from implied to explicitly stated, although it is in your words, not the author's, you're just representing the idea that you've determined to be the thesis. In either case, though, as a first step in analyzing a reader's content, you should restate the author's thesis in your own words, to form a clear idea of what the author is trying to accomplish in the piece. Alright, so we've done that first step, what do we do next? Well, we move on to support once we've identified the thesis, we should note how the author supports their thesis, identify their primary ideas, arguments or findings and the evidence, reasons or examples they offer to support them. As you're rereading the piece, look for different kinds of evidence. So ask yourself, what empirical, philosophical, theoretical or other kinds of evidence or reasoning has the author provided to support their thesis and achieve their goal. So kinds of evidence. And finally, be sure to examine what you already know about the topic. What you have learned in the past is included as part of this and what you are learning now by reading this piece is also part of this. So remember, we're rereading so upon a reread, you may have already learned something new that you didn't know before you read it the first time. That's what you already know, in terms of what you bring to every reading. So ask yourself questions like these has the author left out any important information or arguments? Now that you have a higher resolution understanding of the piece, you can start asking higher resolution questions? Have they left anything out? Now that I know a little bit about this? I can ask this question. Have they neglected certain interpretations of evidence that you found others have offered? If so, why do you think that is? And also try and measure how comprehensive and the interpretations of evidence that you're aware of any particular author is? Alright, and then finally, how can the readings content be explained by its author, audience or purpose? So this means that you should search for links or ways to tie the content back to the preceding areas that we've discussed, which are author, audience and purpose
Transcribed by https://otter.ai