Reading passage
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
of the Problem
Language is very important in human life.
Language is means of communication. Without a language, a person cannot
communicate with others. English is a language in the world. People call it a
international language. In our school, the English language has been given
since the fourth grade of the elementary school up to university.
Most people in the world from the
different countries and nations speak language. Also, many scientific studies
such as education, science, religion, technology, commerce or politic are
written in the language.
English is the first
foreign language in our country, which is taught from Elementary level to
University level. There are four main skills in English:
those are reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Reading and listening are
called receptive skill, in which people need the ability to receive written or
spoken language when they do it. While speaking and writing are called
productive skill because when people do it, they need the ability to produce skill because when people do it, they need
the ability to produce written or spoken language (Harmer, 1998: 44).
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The reason for teaching reading to the
students is because it belongs to the basic language skills in English, just as
important as speaking, listening, and writing. Besides, reading is closely
related with other subjects. Most of the materials given by the teacher (in
English or other subjects) are presented in written form, for example in
handbook, handout, et cetera. It means that to understand the materials, the
students must have the ability to look at and get the meaning of written text,
that is called reading skill.
Reading,
which belongs to receptive skill, can be defined as a process whereby one looks
at and understands what has been written (Williams, 1999: 2). It means that,
when someone reads, he looks at something written and tries to get the meaning
to understand it. Because of that reading is very important to be thaugt to the
student. We need to know about what the paragraph when we want to understand
about our reading, so we will know what the meaning of text or other. What is this paragraph about?" Did you say to yourself,
"This paragraph is about different ways to organize a paragraph"?
That is the topic. First, we have some timing
goals. We aim to complete an initial read-through of an RC passage in about
1.5minutes for shorter passages and about 3 minutes for longer passages. We
should try to answer General questions (e.g., main idea) in about 30 seconds
and Specific questions in about 1 minute.
I take short notes while I read through the passage; not everyone
does, but I would argue that everyone should jot down at least a couple of
words per paragraph. Notes will be heavily abbreviated; see the “Taking Notes”
section below for more on this topic.
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Every passage has a topic and what we call The Point. The topic is
what you would probably expect: the basic topic under discussion in the
passage. The Point is the main reason why the author is writing this
specific passage (you can also think of The Point as the thesis statement). For
instance, a passage topic might be the curious decline of bees in recent years
(entire hives have been dying, losing the ability to find their way back to the
hive, and so on). The Point might be that, out of three possible causes (all
mentioned in the passage), a certain pesticide is the most likely cause
(according to the author). When we read the passage, we need to make sure we
All passages contain “twists,” or changes of direction. These
changes, or contrasts, make for great test questions, so we need to identify
all of the twists. Short passages tend to have only one major twist, while
longer passages tend to have two or more.Keep an eye out for contrast language
such as: but, however, although, yet, despite. Any such language indicates a
change of direction, and we want to make sure we keep track of these twists in
our notes.
For
any passages with more than 1 paragraph, we also need to make sure we
understand the purpose of each paragraph. These passages generally follow the
same rules we’re supposed to use when we write an essay: each paragraph should
have one distinct purpose or message (though there can be twists). Often – but
not always – that message is delivered via a topic sentence, usually the first
or second sentence of the paragraph.
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Finally,
we also need to make sure that we do NOT fully understand or remember all of
the detail in each paragraph for the longer or more complex passages. That
“NOT” was not a typo. We only have a few minutes; we don’t have time to try to
fully understand, let alone remember, all of the detail. Our goal is to know where
the different kinds of detail reside – that’s all.
We get a way with not understanding the detail. This is where we
can take advantage of the fact that the GRE is a standardized test. We are not
going to be asked about every last detail in the passage, nor are we going to
have to provide a written answer that would require us to have synthesized
everything – in other words, this isn’t a school test. That little piece of
knowledge has major implications for how we conduct the initial read-through.
We know that we’re going to have to understand The Point, because
that permeates the entire passage and even, to some extent, every question. We
also know that we will not get asked about every detail on the screen,
because we’reonly going to see up to 4 questions (fewer, for shorter
passages!). So why learn all of that annoying detail unless weknow that we’re
going to get a question about it?
Instead, as we discussed above, our goal for the detail is to know
where it resides. For one-paragraph passages, we want to have an idea of
“beginning, middle, or end” of the paragraph. For longer passages, we want to
know in which paragraph we can find these different details.
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That
way, if we do get a question about the chemical mechanism by which the
pesticide affects a bee’s nervous system, we’ll immediately know that we can
find that detail in paragraph 2. We won’t have any idea how to answer the
question yet; we’ll have to go to paragraph two and read that detail now to see
whether we can figure it out. Note: did you hit a word you don’t know? Skip it.
Is some sentence really convoluted? If it’s the first sentence of a paragraph,
try to find the subject and verb, just to get a basic understanding of what it
says. If it’s a “detail” sentence, skip it. So, a new passage pops up on the
screen and we, naturally, start reading. Read the first sentence, then stop.
Rephrase it in your mind (put it into words that you can understand very
easily), and jot down a few words. Then do the same with the second sentence.
If the passage has only that one paragraph, continue sentence by sentence. If
there are multiple paragraphs, you can start skimming the remainder of a
paragraph once you understand the purpose of that paragraph. While you skim,
try to make this distinction: is this information just detail that goes along
with whatever I decided was the purpose of this paragraph? Or is this
information something new: does it represent a new idea or a change of
direction? If it’s just detail, skip it or jot down a very short note (“bees
dying”). If it represents a new idea or change of direction, then pay a little
more attention and take some short notes.When you’re done, take a moment to articulate
The Point to yourself. Is that already in your notes? Put a star next to it. If
it isn’t in your notes, jot it down.
Taking notes, Your notes should be heavily
abbreviated – much more aggressively abbreviated than notes you would typically
take at work or school.
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In fact, if you look at your notes for a passage a few days later,
you should have a lot of trouble figuring out what they say (without using the
passage as a reference).
How can we get away with abbreviating this heavily? Again, we’re
taking advantage of the nature of this test. You’re going to spend perhaps 3 to
6 minutes with this passage and then you can forget about it forever. You don’t
need to commit anything to long-term memory, nor do you need to take notes from
which you can study in a week. (Of course, if you’re just practicing, you are
going to review your work later, but you should still practice as though it’s
the real thing.)
Analyzing a work, Everyone already knows that it’s important to
review your work on the problems you do, but did you know that it’s also
important to review how you read and take your notes? When you’re done with a
passage and the associated questions, start your review with the passage
itself. When you were done reading (but before you answered questions), what
did you think The Point was? What did you think the purpose of each paragraph
was? Did that knowledge or understanding change as you worked your way through
the questions? If you misunderstood something after the first read-through, why
do you think you misunderstood it? Did you read too quickly and overlook
something? Did you not take the time to rephrase what you read? How could you
do this better next time?
Next,
match your initial notes to your current knowledge of what information is contained
in the passage.
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Were
you able to find the right paragraph easily when answering a specific question?
If not, why not? What should you have jotted down on the initial read-through
to make that easier? Conversely, did you have too much information jotted down?
Maybe you were able to answer a specific question just from your notes, or
maybe you had a lot of detail written down that you never had to use. If so,
you wrote down too much information and you spent too much time on the initial
read-through.
B. The Identification of problem
Based
on the background above, the research identifies the problem as follow:
1. The student will
get understanding a passage
2. The student will
get understanding detail of passage
3. The student will
get understanding the analizying a passage
4. The student will
get understanding the analizying a detail
5. The student will
get understanding the participle of passage
6. The student will
get understanding about how to find detail and passage in a paragraph
C. The formulation of Problem
1. What is passage ?
2. What is detail ?
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3. How to analizying a passage ?
4. How to analizying a detail in a
passage ?
5. What is the participle of passage ?
6. How to find detail in passage of
paragraph ?
The purpose of this paper is :
1. Describing about what the meaning
of passage
2. Describing about detaill
3. To indentify how to analizying a passage
4. To understanding analizying a detail in a passage
5. To understand participle of passage
6. To understand how to find detail in
a passage of paragraph
D. Advantage
1. Giving knowledge about passage
2. Giving knowledge about detail
3. Giving knowledge how to analizying
a passage
4. Giving knowledge how to analizying
a detail in a passage
5. Giving knowledge about the
participle of passage
6. To increase about finding detail in
a passage of paragraph
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CHAPTER II
UNDERSTANDING PASSAGE
A.
Description
a Passage
The act of passing;
transit from one place to another; movement from point to point; a going by,
over, across, or through; as, the passage of a man or a carriage; the passage
of a ship or a bird; the passage of light; the passage of fluids through the
pores or channels of the body.
Transit by means of
conveyance; journey, as by water, carriage, car, or the like; travel; right,
liberty, or means, of passing; conveyance.
Price paid for the liberty to pass; fare;
as, to pay one's passage.
Removal from life; decease; departure;
death.
Way; road; path; channel or course
through or by which one passes; way of exit or entrance; way of access or
transit. Hence, a common avenue to various apartments in a building; a hall; a
corridor.
A continuous course, process, or
progress; a connected or continuous series; as, the passage of time.
A separate part of a course, process, or
series; an occurrence; an incident; an act or deed.
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A particular portion constituting a part of
something continuous; esp., a portion of a book, speech, or musical
composition; a paragraph; a clause.
B.
Description
a Detail
An individual part or item; a
particular or Particulars considered individually and in relation to a whole,A
minor or an inconsequential item or aspect; a minutia: skipped the details
to get to the main point, A minute or thorough treatment or account: went
into detail about his travels.
Detail is a major and minor, support the main idea by telling how, what, when,
where, why, how much, or how many. Locating the topic helps you understand the
point the writer is attempting to express. Identifying will increase your comprehension.
C. Analizying a Passage
In writing about literature or any specific text,
you will strengthen your discussion if you offer specific passages from the
text as evidence. Rather than simply dropping in quotations and expecting their
significance and relevance to your argument to be self-evident, you need to
provide sufficient analysis of the passage. Remember that your over-riding goal
of analysis writing is to demonstrate some new understanding of the text.
D.
Analyze a Detail
1.
Read or reread the text with
specific questions in mind.
2.
Marshal basic ideas, events and names.
Depending on the complexity of book,
this requires additional review of the text.
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3.
Think through your personal reaction to the
book: identification, enjoyment, significance, application.
4.
Identify and consider most
important ideas (importance will depend on context of class, assignment, study guide).
5.
Return to the text to locate
specific evidence and passages related to the major ideas.
6.
Use your knowledge following
the principles of analyzing a passage described below: test, essay, research,
presentation, discussion, enjoyment.
7.
Take
notes as you read. You can’t
possibly recall every tiny piece of information from the passage, so a few
careful notes as you read will help you recall much more information than
memory alone. Keep them short and sweet – just 3-4 words per paragraph.
8.
Don’t
skim. If you only
read a sentence here and there, you’ll never grasp the “big picture” of the
passage. It can be tempting to rush through the passage to get to the questions
more quickly, but then you’ll be going back through the passage inch-by-inch,
searching for the answers to those questions! Read at a relatively efficient
pace, but read thoroughly the first time.
9.
Keep
in mind that Details support Functions. If a question asks you why the author includes a
specific detail from the passage, consider that all the details within a
paragraph are generally used to support the function of that paragraph.
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10.
To answer
specific LSAT detail questions, sometimes you need to take a step back and ask,
what’s the function of the paragraph that the detail is found in?
11.
Look
for the big picture, not the details. When you read the first time, think more about how the
passage is put together, structurally. How does each paragraph fit into the
author’s main idea? How does the author develop his views of the topic? You can
always go back for the tiny details, and if you worry too much about them up
front it’s easy to get overwhelmed, especially if it is especially complex or
unfamiliar.
12.
Keep
an eye out for concessions.
Sometimes the author will have a very strong opinion and argue it throughout
the passage, and then will unexpectedly make a concession to the opposing
side, seemingly weakening his own argument. Don’t worry about it. Whatever the
author spends the most time focused on is his true thesis – he
may just have some reservations about one or more aspects of it.
E.
Principles of analyzing a passage
- Offer
a thesis or topic sentence indicating a basic observation or assertion
about the text or passage.
- Offer
a context for the passage without offering too much summary.
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- Cite
the passage (using correct format).
- Then
follow the passage with some combination of the following elements:
- Discuss
what happens in the passage and why it is significant to the work as a
whole.
- Consider
what is said, particularly subtleties of the imagery and the ideas
expressed.
- Assess
how it is said, considering how the word choice, the ordering of ideas,
sentence structure, etc., contribute to the meaning of the passage.
- Explain
what it means, tying your analysis of the passage back to the
significance of the text as a whole.
- Repeat
the process of context, quotation and analysis with additional support for
your thesis or topic sentence.
F.
Sample analysis paragraphs
1. The author is primarily concerned with
A) Proposing that a new philosophical foundation for modern
biochemistry be developed.
B) Describing the various processes that take place in a living cell.
C) Drawing analogies between different scientific fields.
D) Revealing a discrepancy between a scientific theory and some experimental
results.
E) Questioning the assumptions behind experimental methods in science.
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Type: Main Idea
(D) The third sentence in the second paragraph tells us that the author's
primary concern is that actual experimental observations deny the assumptions of
scientific theory. ("But actual experimental observations deny the second
and crucial part of this assumption."). The last paragraph emphasizes this
discrepancy. This question asks you to find the best summary of the author's
ideas, and therefore requires an understanding of the passage as a whole.
(difficulty level 500 on a scale from 200 to 800)
2. The author provides information that would answer which of the
following questions?
I. What have test-tube experiments revealed about the role of DNA?
II. What viruses interfere with DNA replication?
III. What methods have been developed to allow scientists to observe a living
cell?
A) I only
B) II only
C) I and III only
D) II and III only
E) I, II and III
Type: Detail of the passage
(A) The first option, “What have test-tube experiments revealed about the role
of DNA,” is supported by the passage in the second paragraph.
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No information is provided for the other options. This question
requires one to look back to the passage for evidence of each choice.
(difficulty level 300 on a scale from 200 to 800).
3. The author's argument is directed against which of the
following?
I. The use of test-tube experimentation alone to establish the
validity of scientific theories
II. The exclusion of experimental facts from the formation of scientific
theories
III. The observation of certain cellular components in isolation.
A) I only
B) I and II only
C) I and III only
D) II and III only
E) I, II and III
Type: Detail of the passage
(E) The last sentence of the third paragraph shows that the author is against
the use of test-tube experimentation alone to establish the validity of
scientific theories. The last paragraph also tells us that the author is
against options II and III. Hence, (E) is the correct answer. This question
requires a scanning of the entire passage. I and II deal with our author's
crusade of experimentation versus dogma. III is our author's concern with
complexity versus simple isolation. (difficulty level 400 on a scale from 200
to 800).
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4. The author refers to the results of test-tube experiments
involving the replication of DNA primarily in order to
A) Question the validity of experimental results that describe the
structure of DNA.
B) Provide evidence to contradict the theory that DNA alone governs protein
synthesis.
C) Show the way in which DNA acts as a self-duplicating molecule.
D) Explain the internal structure of DNA.
E) Reveal how nucleic acid can influence the synthesis of proteins.
Type: Function of a
part of the passage
(B) In the last three sentences of the second paragraph, the author says that
there was "an admittedly unproven assumption that, whereas nucleic acids
can guide the synthesis in other nucleic acids and of proteins, the reverse
effect is impossible. However, actual experimental observations deny the second
and crucial part of this assumption." Other test-tube experiments show
that agents besides DNA have a guiding influence. The answer relates to
experiment vs. established dogma. The answer is directly available from the
second paragraph but requires an understanding of the context. (difficulty
level 300 on a scale from 200 to 800)
5. According to the passage, a metal cannot become super
conductive unless
A) The voltage through the metal is increased.
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B) The metal's atomic structure has been destroyed.
C) The metal is exposed to very low temperatures.
D) Electrons in the metal interact with one another at ordinary temperatures.
E) Electrical flow is provided by a battery
Type: Detail of the passage
(C) The third sentence of the fourth paragraph states that “At temperatures
near absolute zero, metals exhibit superconductivity; a unique property that
causes an electric current to flow for months after the voltage is cut
off." This question is just a fact check from the essay and doesn't test
any real understanding. (difficulty level 200 on a scale from 200 to 800)
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CHAPTER III
CONCLUSSION AND
SUGGESTION
A. Congclussion
Every passage has a
topic and what we call The Point. The topic is what you would probably expect:
the basic topic under discussion in the passage. The Point is the main
reason why the author is writing this specific passage (you can also think
of The Point as the thesis statement). For instance, a passage topic might be
the curious decline of bees in recent years (entire hives have been dying,
losing the ability to find their way back to the hive, and so on). The Point
might be that, out of three possible causes (all mentioned in the passage), a
certain pesticide is the most likely cause (according to the author). When we
read the passage, we need to make sure we understand The Point, not just the
topic.
B. Suggestion
Take away how to find a
detail of paragraf
1. You do NOT want to learn or memorize every single
thing that the passage says.
2. Know your goals
3. Find The Point
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4. Find the purpose of each
paragraph
5.
Know where (in which paragraph) to find different kinds of detail
6.
Practice sticking to your timing and practice abbreviating heavily
7.
When you review your work, also review how you read and took notes
on the passage.
REFERENCE
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/passage
