Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

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B E I N G S T R U C T U R A L LY S O U N D : P U T T I N G I T A L L T O G E T H E R
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8 5

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1.
Rank the ideas of the paragraph you have chosen
in order of their importance to you.
2.
Now write a paragraph, choosing whether to put
the ideas in the order of increasing importance
or decreasing importance.
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B E I N G S T R U C T U R A L LY S O U N D : P U T T I N G I T A L L T O G E T H E R
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8 6
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Look again at the passages you read in Lessons 1–5. What structures do you notice at work in those
paragraphs?
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As you read (and write) during the next few days, be aware of the structure of each paragraph you come
across. Try to identify the author’s strategy; try to use different strategies in your own writing.
Skill Building until Next Time

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8 7
Language 
and Style
I
n most of the passages you have read so far, the author’s ideas and intentions have
been very clear. But what happens when they’re not? What if the writer doesn’t pro-
vide a topic sentence that clearly expresses the main idea? Or what if the writer gives
you a poem instead of a clear-cut memorandum? How do you figure out what the author
is trying to say?
The good news is that no matter how cryptic a piece of writing may seem, the author
always leaves clues to help you figure out what he or she means. These clues can be found
in the writer’s 
language
and 
style
—the words used and the type of sentences in which he
or she uses them. The next four lessons, therefore, focus on four different aspects of lan-
guage and style:
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Point of view
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Diction
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Style
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Tone
You’ll learn how authors use these elements to create meaning for their readers. Then
you’ll put it all together in Lesson 15 to see how language, style, structure, and meaning
work together.

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P
icture this: You are walking along a tree-lined street late in the afternoon. Just ahead of you a
woman is sitting on a bench; a dog lies in the shade at her feet. You watch them and nod hello as
you walk by.
Now, picture this: You are that dog. You’re sitting in the shade under a bench next to your owner’s feet.
Suddenly, someone walks down the street in front of you. If you look up, you can see that person nod as he or
she walks by.
Although you’ve just pictured the same thing—a person walking by a woman with a dog—you’ve really
pictured two very different scenes, haven’t you? The scenario looks quite different from the dog’s point of view
than from the walker’s.
This shift in perspective happens in writing by changing the point of view.
Point of view 
is one of the first
choices writers make when they begin to write, because it is the point of view that determines who is speaking to
the reader.
Point of view is the person or perspective through which the writer channels his or her information and ideas.
Just as we may look at a physical object from a number of different perspectives (from above it, below it, behind
it, beside it, and so on), we can look at information and ideas from different perspectives as well (mine, yours,
his or hers, the professor’s, the country’s, and so on).