Reading through tons of material in your Secondary 3 English texts can be unnerving especially if it is in one of those passages with paragraphs of statistics and hidden meanings.
You obviously need to refine the way you approach your text.
This means being able to identify evidence from the rest of the jargon in your Secondary 3 English comprehension passages.
What do I mean?
Secondary 3 English comprehension texts are filled with hidden meanings, dialogues and creative words describing an arresting view or a cluttered background.
How do you sift these from the actual importance in that passage?
There are core pieces of information and others that are merely decorative.
Of course, the first step is being able to identify evidence.
What exactly is evidence and how do you find it?
What is Evidence?
Evidence is the information that is most revealing.
It should tell you something important which is related to the main theme.
It should have these identifying features:
a) Evidence will be needed to answer questions accurately. It should be about exactly what happened, the place or the time for instance.
b) Evidence will be a key feature in what prompts a character to take action. It should be a catalyst in speeding up the chain of happenings.
c) Evidence should be explanatory and reveal how matters transpired the way they did. It could be revealed in a series of explanations and indicate ‘why’ matters happened the way they did. It could include statistics and logical explanations.
In short, all these will be evidence and they relate to the main purport of the text.
You will need to know how important this is and how this will impact the way you answer your Secondary 3 English questions.
Analysing Secondary 3 English Comprehension Texts Correctly
This will bring us to the second step.
Analysing Secondary 3 English texts correctly is the only way to understand evidence correctly.
How do you do this?
Use the simple approach of the 5 Ws and the 1 How.
When you read the text, look out for when and where first foremost.
If this is missing, and this is rarely the case, look out for what.
These are the three important parts of any text.
The time, the place and what is happening are crucial and these are the 3 main pieces of evidence.
If you want to understand the evidence and you are not sure how, make sure that you underline these when you read the text.
When and where can be understood rather easily but what is a more complicated matter.
Sometimes, you do not really know what is going on?
What do you do in such a case?
Ok. Just keep reading and infer that it may happen if that course of action is followed.
If you really have no clue about what is going on, look out for the pros and cons if it is a descriptive text.
Understanding what is more challenging in a narrative text as it is largely subjective.
Deduce the course of actions based on the character’s mindset.
What is the protagonist trying to do?
What is he not trying to do?
Are there others?
Do they affect the course of action?
Is it confusing?
What is causing the confusion?
Answer these Secondary 3 English questions and you will be able to understand even the most confusing of texts.
Valid Assumptions
When you are reading any text, it is alright to make valid assumptions.
That is the only way to process the text and have a definite understanding.
After all, the Secondary 3 English texts are extracts of a larger piece of writing are they not?
They are extracted for a reason.
Understand what that is.
Make solid assumptions based on what could transpire.
Many questions are based on ‘what if.’
Making assumptions when you are reading is not unusual.
You are expected to do that and do it at your own discretion.
What I mean is that you should make logical assumptions that relate to the next paragraph.
It should sync and make sense.
Check to see if your assumptions are on the right track by reading through till the end.
If the story has a thread of logic to it, then proceed.
There are no hard and fast rules for making valid assumptions.
The only reassuring advice I can give you is that it gets better with time.
Follow through all the 3 steps and your assessment of evidence will not only be accurate but you will be able to save time answering your questions.
Your power of processing information would have improved.
Good luck with your next comprehension!