Leitura e Redação em Língua Inglesa - Capa 6mm.

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1ª edição
Leitura e Redação em Língua Inglesa
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LEITURA E REDAÇÃO EM
LÍNGUA INGLESA I

autora
SARAH LUCIA BARBIERI

1ª edição
SESES
rio de janeiro  2015
Conselho editorial  luis claudio dallier; roberto paes; gladis linhares; karen
bortoloti; marilda franco de moura

Autora do original  sarah lucia barbieri

Projeto editorial  roberto paes

Coordenação de produção  gladis linhares

Coordenação de produção EaD  karen fernanda bortoloti

Projeto gráfico  paulo vitor bastos

Diagramação  bfs media

Revisão linguística  sarah lucia barbieri

Imagem de capa  rawlik | dreamstime.com

Todos os direitos reservados. Nenhuma parte desta obra pode ser reproduzida ou transmitida
por quaisquer meios (eletrônico ou mecânico, incluindo fotocópia e gravação) ou arquivada em
qualquer sistema ou banco de dados sem permissão escrita da Editora. Copyright seses, 2015.

Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (cip)

B228l Barbieri, Sarah

Leitura e redação em língua inglesa / Sarah Barbieri.
Rio de Janeiro : SESES, 2015.
120 p. : il.

isbn: 978-85-5548-046-1

1. Reading skill. 2. Writing skill. 3. Communicative competence.

4. English as a foreign language (EFL). I. SESES. II. Estácio.
cdd 428

Diretoria de Ensino — Fábrica de Conhecimento

Rua do Bispo, 83, bloco F, Campus João Uchôa
Rio Comprido — Rio de Janeiro — rj — cep 20261-063
Sumário

Prefácio

1. Reading and Writing in English 9

Objectives 10
1.1  The Reading Skill 11
1.2  Reading in Another Language 12
1.3  The Purposes of Reading Comprehension 14
1.4  Written Text Genres 16
1.5  Reading as a Psycholinguistic Process 19
1.5.1  Schema Theory: Bottom-up and Top-Down Processing 19
1.6  The Writing Skill 21
1.6.1  Text Types and Text Structure 23
Activities 25
Reflection 27
Bibliography 27

2. Reading Strategies 29

Objectives 30
2.1  Reading Strategies 31
2.1.1 Skimming 33
2.1.2 Scanning 33
Activity 34
2.2  Cognates and False Friends 37
Activity 41
2.3  Making Inferences and Drawing Conclusions 42
2.4  Non-Verbal Information 45
2.5  HINTS: Reading Comprehension 47
Reflection 47
3. Reading Comprehension Levels:
Coherence and Cohesion 49

Objectives 50
3.1  Reading Comprehension Stages 51
3.2 Cohesion 52
3.2.1 Reference 55
3.2.2  Substitution and Ellipsis 57
3.2.3 Conjunction 58
3.2.4  Lexical Cohesion 59
3.3 Coherence 60
3.3.1  Discourse Connectors/Markers 62
3.3.2  Functional Coherence 64
Activities 65
Reflection 67
Bibliography 68

4. English Lexicon: Form and Meaning 69

Objectives 70
4.1  Form and Meaning: the relationship between
Grammar and the Lexicon 71
4.2  Vocabulary and Grammar:
The Lexicogrammar Perspective of English 72
4.3  The Form of Words – Affixes 73
4.4  Word Roots in English 75
4.5  Derivational Affixation 76
4.6  Suffixes to Form Adjectives 79
4.6.1  Adjectives from noun or verbs:
-able /-abl (also -ible in some words) 79
4.6.2  Adjectives from noun or verbs: –ous/ –al / –y / –ive 80
4.6.3  Adjectives from nouns: –ful / –less 80
4.7  Suffixes to Form Nouns 80
4.7.1  Nouns from adjectives: -ness 80
4.7.2  Nouns from adjectives: -ity 81
 4.7.3  Nouns from verbs: -tion / -sion 81
4.7.4  Nouns from verbs and adjectives: -ment 81
4.7.5  Nouns from adjectives and verbs: -ance / -ence 81
4.7.6  Nouns from nouns: more restrictive noun suffixes 82
4.8  Suffixes to Form Verbs 82
4.9  Dealing with Words: Polysemy and Dictionary Use 83
4.9.1  Literal and Figurative Meaning 85
Activities 86
Reflection 89
Bibliography 89

5. Organizing and Composing Written Texts 91

Objectives 92
5.1  The Written Language and Genres 93
5.1.1  Formal and Informal Writing: Letters and E-mails 94
5.2  What’s a sentence? 97
Activity 97
5.2.1  Avoiding Run-on Sentences and Comma Splices 99
Activity 99
Activity 102
5.3  What’s a paragraph? 102
5.4  What’s an Essay? 103
5.5  Organizing your ideas 103
5.5.1  Composing your Written Text 104
5.5.2  Argumentative or Persuasive Paragraph and Essay 106
5.6  Major Writing Error Categories 108
5.7  Writing Evaluation General Categories 110
Reflection 111
Bibliography 112
Answer key 112
Prefácio
Welcome to our course – Leitura e Redação em Língua Inglesa!

This course has the aim to develop students’ reading comprehension skills, deep-
ening the understanding of the underlying cognitive processes involved in language
processing, as an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text,
resulting in comprehension. Understanding a written authentic text means extracting
the required information from it as efficiently as possible, rejecting the irrelevant in-
formation and identifying what you are looking for. Improving your reading skills and
understanding the relationship between reading and writing in the first four chapters,
you are going to be ready to have a brief introduction on how to organize and compose
written texts, which is presented in the last chapter.
It is fundamental to be aware that the written communicative competence, con-
cerning reading and writing skills, inserts the social individuals in a society in which
they can interact mutually. When these individuals understand the codes which govern
their thoughts and the necessary attitudes to promote this interaction, they can be con-
sidered able to take part in this society actively, in an inclusive and critical way.
The approach employed to present the different aspects of the appointed contents
is deeply committed to semantic, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic processes;
so that learners understand the similarities and contrasts between reading in their na-
tive language, i.e., Portuguese, and reading in a foreign language, i.e., English, in our
specific case.
More than learning concepts on reading and writing skills, the lessons planned for
this course, Leitura e Redação em Língua Inglesa, propose that you, the learner, adopt
an autonomous and dynamic attitude towards reading and writing texts in English
throughout the course.
I do expect you enhance your level of comprehension, be able to share with me the
pleasure of reading and really enjoy the course!!
I am looking forward to helping you discover the joys of reading!!

Bons estudos!

7
 1
Reading and
Writing in English
Reading and writing have long been considered to be related activities. Studies
that investigated the relationship between reading and writing have shown
that better writers tend to be better readers, that better writers tend to read more
than poorer writers, and that better readers tend to produce more syntactically
mature writing than poorer readers. On the other hand, reading and writing
are viewed as contrasting processes due to the fact that reading is identified as
a receptive skill, whereas writing is defined as a productive skill. Therefore, in
this first chapter we are going to understand what is involved in the processing
of a foreign language reading comprehension and how it is related to the
creation of a text.

OBJECTIVES
•  To learn about the nature of the reading process.
•  To understand the underlying cognitive and linguistic components involved in reading in a
foreign language.
•  To learn the differences between spoken and written language.
•  To understand the difference among genre, text type and text structures.

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1.1  The Reading Skill

The written word surrounds us daily. It confuses us and enlightens us, it depresses us
and amuses us, it sickens us and heals us. At every turn, we who are members of a
literate society are dependent on twenty-some-odd letters and a handful of other writ-
ten symbols for significant, even life-and-death, matters in our lives. How do we teach
second language learners to master this written code? What do we teach them? What
are the issues?
(BROWN, H.D.,1994, p.283)

The quotation clearly depicts our necessity or even addiction to the written
language in the world today. For hundreds of years, being literate has been
the mark of the educated person. Traditionally, the purpose of developing
reading skills in a language has been to have access to the literature written in
that language. More recently, a different understanding of the role of reading
in language teaching and the types of texts that can be used in instruction
have changed with the rise of the Communicative Approach. When the goal
of instruction is communicative competence, everyday materials such as
newspaper articles, bus and train schedules, restaurant menus and even travel
and tourism Web sites become appropriate instruction materials because
reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Therefore,
instruction in reading and reading practice become essential in language
teaching at every level since reading is  fundamental  to function in today’s
society. 
For the purpose of this chapter, the reading skill involves more than only
perceiving and decoding (translating written symbols into corresponding
sounds) the letters, i.e., the symbols used to compose a text. It means reading
and understanding what is actually read. It means that we gather meaning from
what we read. In fact, reading, as well as listening, is considered a passive skill.
We are going to see in this chapter that reading is anything but passive. There
are similarities between listening and reading since both skills are considered
receptive by nature: both involve processing ideas generated by others that
are transmitted through language; both involve highly complex cognitive
processing operations.

capítulo 1 • 11
On the other hand, there are important differences: listening is ephemeral, i.e.,
words are gone as soon as they are uttered, while the written word is permanent,
and can be read as many times as you want or need to. In addition, reading
involves the processing of written language and there are important differences
between spoken and written language not only in our native language but in any
language we try to learn, such as a second or foreign language
Unlike speaking, reading is not something that the individuals learn to do
by themselves just paying attention to others without any formal instruction. A
huge amount of time, money and effort is spent teaching and learning reading
in elementary and high school around the world. In fact, it is probably true to
say that more time is spent teaching reading than any other skill. What is it that
makes reading such a difficult skill to accomplish? What is it that makes a text
difficult to be understood? What is the nature of reading? What does reading
in a foreign language involve? These are some of the questions we are going to
deal with in this book.

1.2  Reading in Another Language

Many English foreign language students consider reading in the foreign
language one of the most important goals they need to achieve since they have to
be able to read to improve in their careers, to gather information, to get a degree
or post-graduation degree, or even to improve their English understanding
skills. Out of the four skills, reading is considered by students the easiest one
due to its nature: it is permanent, you can read at your own pace, you can read
when or where it is convenient for you and you do not depend on anyone else – it
is a solitary activity. But there are also other reasons for students to consider it
easier than the other skills – there are many cognitive similarities between L1
and L2/FL reading processes.
Reading in a first language (L1) and reading in a second language (L2)
or foreign language (FL) share many of the same component skills and the
reading construct is very similar in terms of underlying cognitive and linguistic
components:

•  Vocabulary knowledge: research on vocabulary knowledge has shown that

fluent readers have very large recognition-vocabulary knowledge skills and that
vocabulary knowledge is highly correlated with reading ability.

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 •  Research on morphological, syntactic and discourse knowledge has
shown that they all have an important impact on reading comprehension both
on L1 and L2/FL.
•  Research has shown that strategic processing (inferencing,
comprehension monitoring, and goal setting) and metacognitive skills have an
important impact on reading comprehension.
•  Motivation: more motivated readers both read more and have better
reading comprehension skills.
•  Reading extensively: there is now compelling evidence that extensive
reading can have a significant impact on both learners’ L1 and L2/FL
development.

Nunan (1984) investigated the discourse processing operations of L1 and

L2 in particular at the perception of semantic and discourse relationships in
written texts, and found a high level of agreement between L1 and L2 readers.
While the L2 readers had greater overall difficulty with texts than L1, in relative
terms, those relationships that L1 readers found difficult were also found to
be problematic for L2 readers, and those that L1 readers found easy were also
considered to be easy by L2 readers.
Although reading in a L1 shares numerous important basic elements with
reading in a L2 or FL, the processes also differ greatly. There are some specific
aspects of L2/FL reading skills which distinguish it from L1 reading abilities.
Among these differences, there are six which stand out:

•  L2/FL reader’s knowledge of vocabulary, syntax, discourse markers and

text organization awareness is much more limited.
•  L2/FL readers have much less reading exposure in the target language
than native readers do, which means that they have much less reading practice
in the target language than L1 readers.
•  L2/FL reading is different from L1 reading since the cognitive processing
involves two language systems.
•  L2 readers experience a variety of transfer effects, such as cognitive skills,
strategies, goals and expectations, which will also involve both L1 interference
and facilitation.
•  L2/FL readers rely on a different combination of general background
knowledge due to the fact of drawing on information about the world, that is,
cultural differences.

capítulo 1 • 13
 •  L2/FL readers will have to deal with different social and cultural
assumptions in the target language texts that they might not be familiar with or
find difficulties to cope with.

According to some researchers in the field (GEVA & SIEGAL, 2000; KODA,
2005; GENESEE, 2006), whenever it comes to beginning and intermediate L2/
FL reading skills, more L1 distinct abilities are brought into play, whereas
L2 advanced reading skills are more similar to L1 reading abilities. As L2/
FL readers become fluent and highly skilled in reading comprehension, the
reading processes involved become more similar, though perhaps never the
same. The linguistic differences between L1 and L2/FL have also to be taken
into consideration: the bigger the linguistic differences between L1 and L2/
FL, the bigger the impact on the L2/FL reading. This impact caused by L1/L2
differences will be lessened with increasing L2 reading proficiency; however, it
will be larger for older learners than younger ones.
As a conclusion, although the underlying cognitive processes involved in
L1 and L2/FL reading comprehension are basically the same; the linguistic,
syntax, cultural and pragmatic knowledge of the language have a great impact
on the process as a whole and on the result. Therefore, for most L2/FL readers
who are already literate in a previous language, reading is primarily a matter of
developing appropriate, efficient comprehension strategies some of which are
related to bottom-up processes and others enhance the top-down procedures.
These cognitive processes are going to be introduced later on this chapter (1.7),
while the reading strategies are going to be presented in the next chapter.

1.3  The Purposes of Reading Comprehension

Reading is an activity with a purpose. We read for pleasure or excitement, to
obtain information for some purpose or because we are curious about some
topic, to check information, to know where and when something will take place
or what is available, to keep in touch with friends by email or to understand
business documents and papers, and even to enhance knowledge about the
language or even its literature and culture. We choose the text we are going to

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read depending on our reading purpose, and we also use a different reading
strategy depending on the text we have chosen or need to read. Reading research
shows that good readers

•  read extensively
•  integrate information in the text with existing knowledge
•  read for a purpose; reading serves a function
•  rely on different skills: perceptual processing, phonemic processing,
recall

Besides, reading in a foreign language you are learning brings additional

important benefits that can help you learn the language faster and more
effectively. When you improve your reading skills, all the other skills are
improved as a consequence:

•  Your listening skills improve because the constant repetition of English

words and English patterns helps you learn and remember vocabulary and
grammar structures;
•  Your speaking skills improve because through reading the rhythm of
English becomes familiar and as time goes by it is going to be automatic and
you will notice when a sentence or phrase does not sound correct or natural.
•  Your writing skills improve because reading is the best way to learn new
words, learn how words should be put together (grammar of the language) and
remember the correct spelling of words.

Davies (1995) arranges and describes the different types of reading we deal
with in our daily lives:

•  Receptive reading: the rapid, automatic reading that we do when we read

narratives, which happens almost unconsciously since it does not demands
much from the reader;
•  Reflective reading: the paused and in-depth reading that we do when we
are studying or learning in which the reader moves forward and backward in
the text since it demands careful attention and reflection from the reader.

capítulo 1 • 15
 Hamer (2001), on the other hand, classifies receptive reading as pleasurable
reading and reflective reading as instrumental reading and states that there is
a great deal of ‘crossover’ between the two categories due to the fact that we
can learn many things while reading magazines, newspapers and even poetry,
the same way reading history textbooks or any subject we are studying or which
interests us can be pleasurable as well.

In summary, reading frequently we can improve our English and have

pleasure at the same time. In order to get maximum benefit from any reading
we do, L2/EFL readers should be involved in both extensive and intensive
reading: in the former the readers choose for themselves what they want to read
and do so for pleasure and general language improvement; in the latter the
reader is told or directed to do some specific kind of reading in order to develop
specific skills. There is always a purpose involved in reading; the consequences,
however, are very clear: the best readers often get the best grades, jobs and
opportunities.

1.4  Written Text Genres

Genres are different kinds of communicative events whose communicative
function is social and culturally known in a given society. Furthermore,
according to Swales (1990), genres are known for their schematic structure of
the discourse and their specific content and style choice, as well as the social
contexts in which they are used. In addition to communicative purpose,
“exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of structure,
style, content and intended audience” (idem, p.58).
Recognizing a genre means identifying its layout, i.e., its own characteristics
which causes it to be different from other genres. For example, the genre “recipe”
includes at least the name of the dish, a list of ingredients and the preparation
steps and techniques. The genre “abstract” - which is a brief summary of a
research article, thesis, review, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject
or discipline -  on the other hand, in general includes the research objectives,
the methodology used, the results and the conclusion. If the reader is familiar
with the genre, he/she will have a more effective and directed reading of the
text.

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 Each of the types listed below is an example of a genre of written language,
each with its own rules or conventions for its manifestation. That’s why we,
as readers, are able to immediately identify a genre and know what to look for
within the text.
Fiction: texts that describe imaginary events and people (such as short
stories and novels):

•  classics
•  crime and mystery
•  fantasy
•  horror
•  literary fiction/ popular fiction/ science fiction
•  romance/ novels
•  short stories
•  jokes
•  drama
•  poetry

Non-fiction: texts about facts, real events and real people (such as history or
biography):

•  arts and crafts/ cooking / gardening

•  autobiography / biography/ memoir
•  history
•  reports/ editorials
•  science / technology
•  self-help
•  travel
•  essays/ articles

And many more! The more a reader is familiar with the different kinds of
genres which are relevant to his/her needs and interests, the more confident (s)
he is going to be to read and write different kinds of texts. One of the reasons
people can operate within sociocultural rules is due to the fact that they know
about different styles and recognize different written genres. Language use
is determined by a number of factors. First among these is the purpose of

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our communication, what we want to achieve. The manner we try to achieve
that purpose is determined by the situation or context, the channel used to
communicate and the genre (type of communication) we use to reach it.
Genre theorists argue that language exists to fullfill certain functions, and
that these functions will determine not only the grammatical forms that appear
in the text, and the vocabulary and chunks of language included, but also the
overall shape or structure of the text that emerges from that communication
situation or context. In other words, different types of communicative events
result in different types of texts, and each of them will have their own distinctive
characteristics. Some events result in scientific articles, others in newspaper
reports, and others in job application forms and yet others in many different
kinds of discourse. While each article, report and application form will be
different, each discourse type will share certain characteristics that will make it
noticeable from the other discourse types.

Words and terms commonly used when we talk about

reading comprehension and/or writing:
Autobiography: story of a person’s life written by that same person
Brochure: booklet or small magazine with information and images about a product,
place or service
Ebook: electronic book; book that you can download and read on a computer or mobile
device
Fiction: writing that is about imaginary events and people
Genre: category based on content, style or form
Graded readers: books written at different levels specially for English learners
Heading: title of a section or division in a text, such as a chapter heading
Inference: conclusion based on logic and information provided
Infographic: visual representation of text or information, with minimal text used
Keyword: important word in a text; word that holds the “key” to meaning
Literature: written materials, especially when considered to be of great artistic merit
Memoir: personal account of an aspect of one’s life, written from one’s own memory
Non-fiction: writing that is about facts, real events and real people
Paraphrase: to rewrite (or describe) a text in one’s own words
Read aloud: to read audibly, not silently, so that other people, if present, could hear

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 Reading level: grade that defines one’s reading ability (levels may be shown, for
example, as: beginner to advanced; low to high; numerically 1 to 5)
Subtitle: additional, more detailed heading that comes under a main heading
Summary: brief account of the main points of a text
Transcript: written version of spoken words (for example, transcript of a film or podcast)

1.5  Reading as a Psycholinguistic Process

Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the
text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences,
and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses prior knowledge,
metacognitive skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is.
Therefore, reading comprehension is much more than only decoding the
language contained in a text. In order to reading comprehension to take place
some psycholinguistic processes must apply.

1.5.1  Schema Theory: Bottom-up and Top-Down Processing

According to Nunan (1999), reading is an interactive process, in which the

reader constantly moves back and forth between bottom-up and top-down
processes.
Bottom-up processing of information is a model that assumes that reading is
a process of decoding written symbols from the printed page or screen in a linear
fashion. According to this model, the reader must first recognize a multiplicity
of linguistic signals, such as letters, morphemes, syllables, words, phrases,
grammatical cues, discourse markers and use his/her linguistic data processing
mechanisms to derive and retrieve meaning from the texts. To sum up, it is a
linear process in which meaning is derived as the last step in the process.
Top-down or psycholinguistic processing of information suggests that the
reader formulates a set of hypotheses or predictions about the meaning of the
text he is about to read and monitors the comprehension process to determine
whether or not his predictions or assumptions were correct. Reading is a
process of reconstructing the meaning of the text, departing from the written

capítulo 1 • 19
symbols and applying prior knowledge the reader already has about the subject
to make sense of what (s)he reads.
Schema theory and prior knowledge refers to the cognitive processes
underlying the learning process, information processing and some other
aspects of the human mind. According to this theory, we make sense of any
piece of discourse making use of our prior knowledge of the world and such
knowledge is often referred to as schema1 (plural schemata), i.e., we interpret
what we read in terms of what we already know, and we integrate what we already
know with the content of what we are reading. The schema theory suggests
that “our knowledge and expectations about the world will strongly affect
our ability to understand new information by providing a framework within
which that new information might fit” (NUNAN, 1999). The basic idea behind
schema theory is that texts, whether spoken or written, are only a proposal of
meaning construction once they do not carry meaning in themselves. Rather,
they provide clues so that readers can reconstruct the original meaning of
the author. In these terms, reading comprehension is an interactive process
between the reader and the text, in that the reader is required to fit the clues
provided in the text to his/her own prior or background knowledge.

According to Carrell and Eisterhold (1988), schema theory is related to

bottom-up and top-down processing in the following way:

According to schema theory, the process of interpretation is guided by the principle

that every input is mapped against some existing schema and that all aspects of that
schema must be compatible with the input information. This principle results in two basic
mode of information processing, called bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up
processing is evoked by the incoming data; the features of the data enter the system
through the best fitting, bottom-up schemata. Schemata are hierarchically organized, from
most general at the top to most specific at the bottom. At these bottom-level schemata
converge into higher level, more general schemata, these too become activated. Bottom-
up processing is therefore called data-driven. Top-down processing, on the other hand,
occurs as the system makes general predictions based on higher level, general schemata
and then searches the input for information to fit into these partially satisfied, higher order
schemata. Top-down processing is, therefore, called conceptually-driven.

1. Each of us carries in our heads mental representations of typical situations that we come across. When we are
stimulated by particular words, discourse patterns, or contexts, such schematic knowledge is activated and we are
able to recognize what we see or hear because it fits into patterns we already know. (HARMER, 2001)

20 • capítulo 1
 In summary, the reader brings information, knowledge, experience,
feelings and culture to the text. Readers understand what they read because
they are able to assign meaning already stored in their memories to the graphic
representation visually accessed. Reading comprehension skill depends on the
efficient interaction between linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the world.

1.6  The Writing Skill

How is writing like swimming? Give up? Answer: The psycholinguist Eric Lenneberg
(1967) once noted, in a discussion of “species specific” human behavior that human
beings universally learn to walk and to talk, but that swimming and writing are culturally
specific, learned behaviors. We learn to swim if there is a body of water available and
usually only if someone teaches us. We learn to write if we are members of a literate
society, and usually only if someone teaches us.
(BROWN, H.D.,1994, p.319)

The concern of writing teachers and professors until some time ago was
mostly focused on the final product, i.e., the essay, the story, the report and
what that product should be like. The written material was supposed to meet
specific standards in terms of rhetorical style, reflect accurate grammar and
be organized in a conventional way, such as a model composition. Product-
oriented approaches focus on tasks that learner should imitate, copy from
models provided by the teacher or the textbook.
More recently writing focus has changed to the writing process itself, in
which the learner should be involved in drafting, writing, revising and editing
the text. The underlying idea of this process approach is that there will never
be the perfect text, but the writer can improve the text through producing,
reflecting, discussing and redoing over and over again on the piece of writing.
In this approach, the focus is less on a perfect final product and more on the
development of successive drafts of a text. Writers are encouraged to put their
ideas on the paper without worrying too much about formal correctness in the
initial stages. They share their writings with others, get feedback on their ideas
and how they are expressed before revising it.

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 Before discussing text structure and text types, it is essential that students
understand the difference between spoken and written language. While written
language emerged from spoken language, it is more than “talk written down”
(NUNAN, 1999). According to Halliday (1985), writing emerged in societies as a
result of cultural changes that created new communicative needs which could
not be met by the spoken language. With the creation of agriculture – based
societies, rather than gathering and hunting, people needed permanent records
that could be referred to whenever necessary. This need led to the emergence of
a new form of language: writing.
Despite of the fact that some written texts can show the characteristics that we
associate with spoken language, and that spoken language and written language
overlap, written language does have certain features that are not shared by the
spoken language, both in terms of its linguistic features and the contexts in
which it will be interpreted. Linguistically, written language tends to integrate
complex language consisted of subordinating clauses, whereas spoken language
tends to consist of short sentences or coordinated clauses. In this way, written
texts usually have more information packed into since the language used is more
condensed, i.e., we use fewer words to convey more meaning. The number of
lexical or content words per clause is referred to as lexical density. The density of
written language is also reinforced by the tendency to create nouns from verbs,
as in the following examples (NUNAN, 1999):

•  Good writers reflect on what they write. (spoken language)

•  Reflection is a characteristic of good writers (written language)

According to the functional view of language, linguistic analysis is developed

to account for relationships between the forms of the language and the various
situations or contexts in which language is used. The systematic relationship
between language structure and function is described by Halliday:

Every text – that is, everything that is said or written – unfolds in some context of use;
furthermore, it is the uses of language that, over tens of thousands of generations,
have shaped the system. Language has evolved to satisfy human needs; and the way
it is organized is functional with respect to those needs – it is not arbitrary. A functional
grammar is essentially a ‘natural’ grammar, in the sense that everything in it can be
explained, ultimately, by reference to how language is used. (p. xiii)

22 • capítulo 1
 The table below, adapted from Burns and Joyce (1997, p.13), summarizes
the main differences between spoken and written language according to
functional models of linguistic analysis:

SPOKEN LANGUAGE WRITTEN LANGUAGE

1. Situational dependent
Used to communicate at same time
Relies on shared knowledge and often makes
reference to shared situation
Generally accompanies action
2. Dialogic in Nature
Usually involves two or more speakers creating
spoken texts together
3. Unrehearsed and Spontaneous
Interactants build spoken texts within social and
linguistic parameters
4. Records the world as happenings
Relies more on verbs to carry meanings
5. Grammatically intricate
Tends to contain more grammatical words such
as pronouns, fillers, repetitions
Develops through intricate networks or clauses
rather than complete sentences as it is jointly
constructed and relies more heavily on verbs
1. Contextual dependent
Used to communicate across time
Must recreate for readers the context it is
describing
Generally reflects action
2. Monologic in Nature
Usually written by one person removed from an
audience
3. Edited and redrafted
Written language can be edited and redrafted any
number of times
4. Records the world as things
Relies more on nouns to carry meanings
5. Lexically dense
Tends to have more lexical or content words as
meaning is carried by nouns and noun groups
Relies on the process of nominalization in which
things that are not nouns can be turned into
nouns

Clearly, students learn to write in part by carefully observing what is already

written. That is, they learn by observing, or reading, the written word. By reading
and studying a variety of relevant text genres, students gain important insights
both about how they should write and about subject matter that may become
the topic of their writing.

1.6.1  Text Types and Text Structure

While the notion of genres refers to discourse distinctions, recognized by

a linguistic community, which reflects differences in external format and
situations of use, i.e., it is based on discourse and its communicative purpose;
texts in general, on the other hand, can be defined on the basis of cognitive
categories or on the basis of strictly linguistic criteria, i.e., similarities in the
use of co-occurring linguistic features. It means that, communicative functions
(text structure) and text types are considered rhetorical strategies, properties of
a text, which cut across genres.

capítulo 1 • 23
 Texts can be classified according to their type, also referred to as mode:

•  Narrative texts: tells a story and entertains the reader. This kind of
text is based on perception in time and the succession of events is given in
chronological order.
•  Argumentative texts: defend a particular position by means of
argumentative techniques and evidences.
•  Descriptive texts: describes places, objects or characters.
•  Expository texts: explains or informs the reader about something. This
kind of text avoids repetition, contains facts and provides information in a clear
way, introducing the subject and then developing it.
•  Injunctive texts: give suggestions, orders, and instructions (e.g.: recipes,
medical prescriptions, prayers, drafts of a law).

No theory of types or modes of text is rigid in its categorization. Most texts

employ multiple views of reality and are therefore multiple in type, which means
that pure narration, description, exposition, argumentation and injunction
hardly occurs.
Text structure, on the other hand, refers to a descriptive framework for text,
which provides a combination of features that identifies hierarchic structure in
text. It describes the relations between text parts in functional terms, identifying
both the transition point of a relation and the extent of the items related.
Recent research has shown that the rhetorical organization of a text interacts
with the reader’s background knowledge of textual organization helping the
reader improve text comprehension. The better a reader understands text
structures, the higher the comprehension. Understanding text structures is the
key to understanding expository texts. If students are able to recognize common
texts structures, then they are able to monitor their own comprehension.
Although the terms may vary, lists of text structures generally include:

•  Description: the author explains a topic, idea, person, place, or thing by

listing characteristics, features, and examples. The focus is on one thing and
its components.
•  Sequence: the author lists items or events in numerical or chronological
order. (S)he describes the order of events or how to do or make something.
•  Cause - Effect: the author lists one or more causes or events and the

24 • capítulo 1
resulting consequences or effects (effect = what happened? / Cause = what made
it happen?). The purpose of this kind of text is to explain why or how something
happened, exists or works.
•  Compare - Contrast: the author explains how two or more things are alike
and/or how they are different.
•  Problem – Solution: the author states a problem and lists one or more
possible solutions to it. It may also include the pros and cons for the solutions
presented.

Descriptions of the relationship between reading and writing suggest that

instruction about text structure can also improve writing since each structure can
be related to some signal questions and signal words and even paragraph frames.

ACTIVITIES
In this chapter you have learned that through reading comprehension we internalize linguistic
information and vocabulary without which we cannot produce language, i.e., which is essential
to all the skills, reading and writing included. Therefore, the activities suggested here are
focused mainly in developing reading skills. There are a number of free online sites and links
which provide plenty of reading comprehension practice:

Top Sites
•  Understanding American Culture and Customs. Excellent free online ESL reading
materials.
•  A Young Couple’s Life in the USA. A novel written to help English learners understand
various aspects of American life.
•  365 Short Stories for ESL Learners. ONE STORY A DAY, YOUR ENGLISH WILL BE
GREAT! The best ESL reading materials online! Free for everyone to use.

For Beginners
•  English Level 1. 50-word interesting essays written for English beginners.
•  English Level 2. 100-word interesting essays written for English beginners.
•  English Level 3. Short, easy and interesting to read essays written for English beginners.
•  Super Easy Reading for ESL Beginners. 100 short stories (50 words each), simple
present tense, + Audio.
•  Short Stories for ESL/EFL Beginners (1). 200 Short Stories + Audio & Exercises for

capítulo 1 • 25
ESL/EFL beginners to practice reading and listening.
•  Short Stories for ESL/EFL Beginners (2). 200 more easy stories for ESL/EFL beginners
to practice reading and listening.
•  Easy Reading. 200 easy stories for beginners. Some stories are the same as the stories in
the Short Stories for ESL/EFL Beginners.
•  Simple Short Stories. Many exercises for vocabulary, grammar, reading, and writing.
•  Adult Learning Activities. California Distance Learning Project. A free site to build your
reading and life skills.
•  News for Beginners. The site is for beginners who want to solidify their vocabulary before
moving onto intermediate or advanced level.

History and Culture

•  Biography. Reading biographies, watching interviews and video clips.
•  Presidents of the United States of America. Biographies of 43 USA Presidents.
•  50 States of the United States. Introduction to all the 50 states. Also learn the
pronunciation of names of the states.

Quotes
•  Proverbs by Subjects. The most popular proverbs in different categories.
•  The Quotations Page. The largest and oldest Quotations Page on the Web with about 30
categories such as Great Leaders, Sarcasm, and Wisdom.
•  Finest Quotes. A huge collection of inspirational quotes, thoughts of greatestminds of
history.
•  Literature Quotes. Quotations from the great works of literature. You can search for
quotations in a number of different ways.
•  Inspirational Quotes. Read quotes and sayings from famous people in history.
•  Einstein Quotes. Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein.

Public Domain Books

•  A Christmas Carol. The famous novella by English author Charles Dickens.
•  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. An adaptation of a Mark Twain classic, and appropriate
for low-intermediate to intermediate learners.
•  Public Domain Books. Completely free books from a variety of different authors, collected
here for you to read online.
(available at:< http://www.rong-chang.com/reading.htm > )

26 • capítulo 1
 REFLECTION
In this chapter we have talked about the relationship between the reading and writing skills,
about reading as a psycholinguistic process, about the differences between spoken and
written language, the difference among the concepts of genre, text types and text structures
and the importance of reading extensively in order to create and produce better texts.

FURTHER READING
CARRELL, P. L.; EISTERHOLD, J. C. Schema Theory and ESL Reading Pedagogy. In:
CARREL, P. L. et al. Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading. United
Kingdom: Cambridge, 2000.
NUTTALL, C. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. 2nd edition. Oxford:
Heinemann, 1996.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROWN, H. D. Teaching by Principles: an interactive approach to language learning. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Regents, 1994.
CANALE, M.; SWAIN, M. Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language
Teaching and Testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47, 1980.
HARMER, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 3rd edition, England: Longman, 2001.
NUNAN, D. Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1999.
SCARCELLA, R. C.; OXFORD, R. L. The Tapestry of Language Learning: the individual in the
communicative classroom. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1992.

capítulo 1 • 27
28 • capítulo 1
 2
Reading Strategies
Whenever we read something, we usually have a purpose to carry out the
reading task: we can read a novel for pleasure or a label on a wine bottle to get
information about the wine, we can scan a phone directory to find a number
or skim an article to look for specific information. In summary, we read slowly
and carefully for both accuracy and pleasure, we skim to get the general idea of
a text or article, and we scan others to get specific information. Therefore, we
use different strategies to perform a variety of reading tasks in our everyday lives
since we have different purposes in mind for each of these different tasks.

OBJECTIVES
•  To understand what reading strategy means.
•  To learn about the main reading strategies.
•  To practice the main reading strategies.

30 • capítulo 2
2.1  Reading Strategies

Mircea is a conscientious student. When he is told he will be tested on the contents of

Chapter 2 in the textbook, he looks up every unknown word in the dictionary in an effort
to fix the information in his memory. Despite his extended preparations, he doesn’t do
very well on the test, though he says he spent hours preparing. Lia, on the other hand,
excels on the exam, but she has approached the text in a very different way. Before she
reads the chapter, she skims through it, looking at subheadings and graphics so as to
give herself a general idea of what the text will be about. As she reads, she connects the
material in the chapter to what she already knows. She frequently asks herself ques-
tions about the text, looking back or ahead to link one part of the text to another. When
she is puzzled by the content, she searches for clues in the context, tries to paraphrase,
or considers what she knows about text structure. In short, Lia is reading like an expert,
while Mircea is relying on just one technique. The difference between the two is in their
use of reading strategies.
(JANSEN, 2002)

In the previous chapter, we have seen that the reader is able to (re)construct
the meaning of the text making use of different knowledge levels: linguistic,
textual, background and strategic. The strategic knowledge is related to the
use of reading strategies in order to assist the reader to make sense of the text.
However, before we start talking about reading strategies, it is important to
understand the difference between reading strategies and reading skills.
According to Afflerbach, Pearson and Paris (2008), reading strategies “are
deliberate, goal-directed attempts to control and modify the reader’s efforts to
decode a text, understand words, and construct meanings of a text.” Reading
skills, on the other hand, “are automatic actions that result in decoding and
comprehension with speed, efficiency and fluency and usually occur without
awareness of the components or control involved.” So, according to the
authors, the basic difference between the terms is that the former is something
controllable, while the latter is something automatic. An example that can help
understand the difference is that of a student who is trying to understand a text,
but gets to the conclusion that he/she is going too fast on the reading process.

capítulo 2 • 31
So, the student decides to slow down the pace and ask him/herself after
reading each sentence: does it make sense to me? This is a reading strategy:
a conscious, deliberate, metacognitive action. In short, a reading strategy is
related to those mental processes and operations consciously used by students
to learn something. They differ in terms of their intentionality (strategy
being intentional and skill unintentional) as well as their automatic (skill) or
nonautomatic (strategy) status.
According to Rigney (1978), research in L2/FL reading suggests that students
use a variety of strategies to help them acquire, store, and retrieve information
from a written text. Strategies are referred to as learning techniques, behaviors,
problem-solving or study skills which make learning more effective and efficient
(Oxford & Crookall, 1989). Some reading strategies are related to bottom-up
procedures and others enhance the top-down processes. In the context of L2/
FL learning, we can make a distinction between strategies that make learning
more effective, versus strategies that improve comprehension. The former are
generally referred to as learning strategies in the literature. Comprehension
or reading strategies, on the other hand, indicate how readers conceive of
a task, how they make sense of what they read, and what they do when they
don’t understand. In short, such strategies are processes used by the learner to
enhance reading comprehension and overcome comprehension failures.
According to Brown (1994), there are ten reading strategies, among which we
can list skimming, scanning, inference, non-verbal information and dictionary
use. We are going to start talking about the two most valuable reading strategies,
according to Brown (1994), not only for second or foreign language learners but
also native speakers of English: skimming and scanning.

Rebecca Oxford, one of the leading teachers and researchers in the language learning
strategies field, argues that strategies are important for two reasons:
(1) strategies “are tools for active, self-directed involvement, which is essential for de-
veloping communicative competence” (1990);
(2) learners who have developed appropriate learning strategies have greater self-con-
fidence and learn more effectively.

32 • capítulo 2
2.1.1  Skimming

Skimming consists of glimpsing, i.e.; quickly taking a look at a whole text, be

it an article, a story, an essay, an article or even a chapter, to get the gist, the
main idea of that piece of writing. Skimming gives the readers the advantage
of being able to predict the purpose of the passage, the main topic or message,
and possibly some hints related to the developing or supporting ideas. It is the
first step to activate the schemata related to the topic as they embark on more
focused reading.
When we skim a text, we are not worried about the details: it happens all the
time in our everyday lives whenever we have a glance at newspaper or magazine
headlines to get the gist of articles. Thus, it can help us decide if the text is
interesting and if we should read it in more detail. This reading strategy can
also help us read a text more quickly.
How to skim through a text:

•  Read the title, subtitles and subheadings to find out what the text is about;
•  Look at the pictures, charts or tables to get more information about the
text;
•  Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph;
•  Glimpse through the text and look out for key words – don’t read word for
word;
•  Try to identify the main ideas in the text.

Students can be trained to skim passages by taking some minutes to glance

through a text or the material, turning down the passage or closing the material
and telling or writing down what they learned. Let’s give it a try?

2.1.2  Scanning

Scanning, on the other hand, consists of quickly searching for some particular
item or items of information in a text, directory, dictionary, glossary, etc. The
purpose of scanning is to extract certain specific information without reading
through the entire text. It is also extremely important for academic English and
in vocational or general English; scanning is essential in dealing with genres
like schedules, manuals, forms, documents, etc. Scanning exercises may ask

capítulo 2 • 33
learners to look for names or dates, to find a definition of a key concept, or to
list a certain number of supporting details.
Scanning tasks, in which readers should advance to look out for a specific
item of information while reading, are very useful for getting students to read
selective. Careful selection of texts is also important, since efficient reading
legitimizes skipping insignificant parts of a text for certain tasks. In our
everyday activities, we may use scanning to:

•  Find a phone number or address in a directory;

•  Look up a word in a dictionary or glossary;
•  Look for the TV program time or the program channel;
•  Pick out the URL you want from a searching directory, such as Google;
•  Look up details or prices in a catalogue;
•  Check information on a recipe.

Whenever reading a recipe, for example, scanning can be useful to check

the ingredients you need, to see how long it will take to cook, to know when to
switch the oven on.

ACTIVITY
Skim the text below and try to answer the skimming and scanning exercises that follow.

Culture Shock
Psychologists tell us that there are four basic stages that human beings pass through
when they enter and live in a new culture. This process, which helps us to deal with culture
shock, is the way our brain and our personality reacts to the strange new things we encounter
when we move from one culture to another. If our culture involves bowing when we greet
someone, we may feel very uncomfortable in a culture that does not involve bowing. If
the language we use when talking to someone in our own culture is influenced by levels
of formality based on the other person’s age and status, it may be difficult for us to feel
comfortable communicating with people in the new culture.
Culture begins with the “honeymoon stage”. This is the period of time when we first arrive
in which everything about the new culture is strange and exciting. We may be suffering from
“jet lag” but we are thrilled to be in the new environment, seeing new sights, hearing new
sounds and language, eating new kinds of food. This honeymoon stage can last for quite a
long time because we feel we are involved in some kind of great adventure.

34 • capítulo 2
 Unfortunately, the second stage of culture shock can be more difficult. After we have
settled down into our new life, working or studying, buying groceries, doing laundry, or living
with a home-stay family, we can become very tired and begin to miss our homeland and our
family, girlfriend/boyfriend, pets. All the little problems that has everybody in life seems to
be much bigger and more disturbing when you face them in a foreign culture. This period of
cultural adjustment can be very difficult and lead to the new arrival rejecting or pulling away
from the new culture. This “rejection stage” can be quite dangerous because the visitor may
develop unhealthy habits (smoking and drinking too much, being too concerned over food or
contact with people from the new culture). This can, unfortunately lead to the person getting
sick or developing skin infections or rashes which then makes the person feel even more
scared and confused and helpless. This stage is considered a crisis in the process of cultural
adjustment and many people choose to go back to their homeland or spend all their time with
people from their own culture speaking their native language.
The third stage of culture shock is called the “adjustment stage”. This is when you begin
to realize that things are not so bad in the host culture. Your sense of humor usually becomes
stronger and you realize that you are becoming stronger by learning to take care of yourself
in the new place. Things are still difficult, but you are now a survivor!
The fourth stage can be called “at ease at last”. Now you feel quite comfortable in your
new surroundings. You can cope with most problems that occur. You may still have problems
with the language, but you know you are strong enough to deal with them. If you meet
someone from your country who has just arrived, you can be the expert on life in the new
culture and help them to deal with their culture shock.
There is a fifth stage of culture shock which many people don’t know about. This is called
“reverse culture shock”. Surprisingly, this occurs when you go back to your native culture and
find that you have changed and that things there have changed while you have been away.
Now you feel a little uncomfortable back home. Life is a struggle!
(adapted from: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/elc/studyzone/490/wchild/wchild20.htm)

01. This exercise practices skimming - that means glancing through the text to find only the
main ideas of a text. Try to answer the following question in 5 minutes.
1. When does culture shock happen?
a) When you reach your teens.
b) When you move to a big city.
c) When you meet foreign people for the first time.
d) When you go to live in a foreign culture.

capítulo 2 • 35
2. How do you feel during the first stage of culture shock?
a) Lonely and depressed.
b) Bored and homesick.
c) Happy and excited.
d) Angry and frustrated.
3. How do you feel during the second stage?
a) Homesick and afraid.
b) Interested and amused.
c) Stressed, but positive.
d) You have no particular feelings.
4. How could the third stage be described?
a) Adjustment.
b) Rejection.
c) Enthusiasm.
d) Anger.
5. How do you feel during the fourth stage of culture shock?
a) Tense, but positive.
b) Relaxed.
c) Negative and stressed.
d) Afraid.
6. Why might reverse culture shock be a problem?
a) It hardly ever happens.
b) It is extremely stressful.
c) Most people do not expect it.
d) It only happens to young people.

02. This exercise practices scanning. Go back to the text and try to find the answers for the
questions below.
1. The four basic stages of culture shock are:
a) honeymoon, rehearsal, memorization, return.
b) honeymoon, rejection, adjustment, at ease at last.
c) honeymoon, rejection, reverse, at ease at last.
d) honeymoon, rehearsal, rejection, at ease at last.
2. What is the mysterious fifth stage of culture shock called?
a) Rehearsal culture shock.
b) Reverse culture shock.

36 • capítulo 2
 c) Foreign culture shock.
d) Unknown culture shock.

03. Why would people in the second stage of culture shock choose to spend all their time
with people from their homeland?
a) They are afraid to risk being uncomfortable with strangers and it is easier to stay
with people from their own culture.
b) They are afraid of skin diseases and want to hide from contact with foreigners.
c) They feel that they can learn the new language by themselves and don’t need
contact with people from the new culture.
d) They are only interested in going home.
(available at:< http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/elc/studyzone/490/wchild/wchild21.htm >)

CONNECTION
1. Learn how to skim and scan text with these English skills resources, videos and games
designed for adults.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/skimming-and-scanning>
2. More skimming and scanning exercises:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/skimming-and-scanning/resources/l1>

2.2  Cognates and False Friends

According to the Longman Dictionary of Applied–Linguistics, a cognate is
“a word in one language which is similar in form and meaning to a word in
another language because both languages are related” (Richards et al., 1985, p.
43). For example, important and interesting and importante e interessante, in
English and Portuguese respectively, are cognates. English and Portuguese have
many cognate words due to the fact that Portuguese originated from Latin and
more than seventy percent of the English vocabulary derives from Latin. Thus,
the meaning of many unknown English words can be easily guessed from the
context whenever a Brazilian learner is reading an English text. Not surprisingly,
researchers who study L1 and L2/FL acquisition have found that students benefit

capítulo 2 • 37
from cognate awareness. Cognate awareness is the ability to use cognates from
the native language as a tool for understanding a second language.
On the other hand, when two words have the same or similar forms in two
languages, but have different meanings in each of them, they are called false
friends1 (Richards et al., 1985, p. 103). For example, the English word library
and the Portuguese word livraria are false friends. The word library is translated
to Portuguese as biblioteca and, conversely, livraria as bookstore in English.
Therefore, it is extremely important that students should be aware that false
friends are also a fact – there are many English words that look like specific
words in Portuguese, but they are not cognates since their etymologic origin and
consequently their meanings are different in both languages. Let’s take a look at
the following list. The English words, on the left, are similar to the Portuguese
words, on the right, but as you can notice their meanings are different.

ENGLISH - PORTUGUESE PORTUGUESE - ENGLISH

Actually - na verdade, de fato Atualmente - nowadays, today
Agenda - pauta do dia/reunião Agenda - appointment book;
Amass - acumular, juntar Amassar – to crush
Anticipate - prever; ficar na expectativa Antecipar - to bring/ move forward
Application - inscrição, registro, uso Aplicação (financeira) - investment
Appointment - hora marcada, compromisso Apontamento - note
profissional
Appreciation - gratidão, reconhecimento Apreciação - judgement
Argument - discussão, bate boca Argumento - reasoning, point
Assist - ajudar, dar assistência Assistir - to attend, to watch
Assume - presumir, aceitar como verdade Assumir - to take over
Attend - assistir, participar de Atender - to help; to answer; to see, Audiência -
Audience - platéia, público court appearance
Avocado - abacate Advogado - lawyer
Balcony - sacada Balcão - counter
Beef - carne bovina Bife - steak
Cafeteria - refeitório (univers./industrial) Cafeteria - coffee shop, snack bar
Camera - máquina fotográfica Câmara - tube (pneu); chamber (pessoas)
Carton - caixa de papelão, pacote de cigarros Cartão - card
Casualty - morte por acidente/ guerra, fatalidade Casualidade - chance, fortuity
Cigar - charuto Cigarro - cigarette
Collar - colarinho, gola,coleira Colar - necklace
College - faculdade, ensino superior Colégio (2º grau) - high school
Commodity - artigo, mercadoria Comodidade - comfort
Competition - concorrência Competição - contest

1  The term false cognate still used by some authors is not adequate because two words can have the same etymologic
origin, but may have developed different meanings in two different languages. The words eventually (English) and
eventualmente (Portuguese) are cognate words since they have the same etymologic origin, but their meanings are
different. In this case, we had better label them false friends.

38 • capítulo 2
 ENGLISH - PORTUGUESE
Comprehensive - abrangente, amplo, extenso
Compromise - entrar em acordo, fazer concessão
Contest - competição, concurso
Convenient- prático
Costume - fantasia (roupa)
Data - dados (números, informações)
Deception - logro, fraude, o ato de enganar
Defendant - réu, acusado
Design - projetar, criar / projeto, estilo
Editor - redator
Educated - instruído, com escolaridade
Emission - descarga (de gases, etc.)
Enroll - inscrever-se, alistar-se, registrar-se
Eventually - finalmente, mais cedo ou mais tarde
Exit - saída, sair
Expert - especialista, perito
Exquisite - belo, refinado
Fabric - tecido
Graduate program - Curso de pós-graduação
Grip - agarrar firme
Hazard - risco, arriscar
Idiom - expressão idiomática
Income tax return - declaração de imposto renda
Injury - ferimento
Intend - pretender, ter intenção
Jar - pote
Journal - periódico, diário
Lamp - luminária
Lecture - palestra, aula
Legend - lenda
Library - biblioteca
Location - localização
Lunch - almoço
Magazine - revista
Mayor - prefeito
Medicine - remédio, medicina
Moisture - umidade
Notice - notar,
Novel – romance (livro)
Office - escritório
Parents - pais
Particular - específico, exato
Pasta - massa (alimento)
PORTUGUESE - ENGLISH
Compreensivo - understanding
Compromisso - appointment; date
Contexto - context
Conveniente - appropriate
Costume - custom, habit
Data - date
Decepção - disappointment
Advogado de defesa - defense attorney
Designar - to appoint
Editor - publisher
Educado - well-mannered, polite
Emissão - issuing (of a document)
Enrolar - to roll; to wind; to curl
Eventualmente - occasionally
Êxito - success
Esperto - smart, clever
Esquisito - strange, odd, weird
Fábrica - plant, factory
Curso de graduação - undergraduate program
Gripe - influenza (flu)
Azar - bad luck
Idioma - language
Devolução de imposto de renda - income tax
refund
Injúria - insult
Entender - understand
Jarra - pitcher
Jornal - newspaper
Lâmpada - light bulb
Leitura - reading
Legenda - subtitle
Livraria - book shop
Locação - rental
Lanche - snack
Magazine - department store
Maior - bigger
Medicina - medicine
Mistura - mix, mixture, blend
Notícia - news
Novela - soap opera
Oficial - official
Parentes - relatives
Particular - personal, private
Pasta - paste; folder; briefcase
capítulo 2 • 39
 ENGLISH - PORTUGUESE
Policy - política (diretrizes)
Port - porto
Prejudice - preconceito
Prescribe - receitar
Preservative - conservante
Pretend - fingir
Private - particular
Pull - puxar
Push - empurrar
Range - variar, cobrir
Realize - notar, perceber, dar-se conta,
Record - gravar, registrar, disco, gravação
Refrigerant - substância refrigerante usada em
aparelhos
Requirement - requisito
Resume - retomar, reiniciar
Résumé - curriculum vitae, currículo
Retired - aposentado
Senior - idoso
Service - atendimento
Stranger - desconhecido
Support - apoiar, bancar (dinheiro, comida)
Tax - imposto
Trainer - preparador físico
Turn - vez, volta, curva; virar, girar
Tutor – professor particular
Ultimately - em última análise
Union Representatives – representantes sindicais
Voluble – falante, loquaz
PORTUGUESE - ENGLISH
Polícia - police
Porta - door
Prejuízo - damage, loss
Prescrever - expire
Preservativo - condom
Pretender - to intend, to plan
Privado - private
Pular - to jump
Puxar - to pull
Ranger - to creak
Realizar - to carry out, to accomplish
Recordar - to remember, to recall
Refrigerante - soft drink, soda
Requerimento - request, petition
Resumir - summarize
Resumo - summary
Retirado - removed, secluded
Senhor - gentleman, sir
Serviço - job
Estrangeiro - foreigner
Suportar (tolerar) - can stand
Taxa - rate; fee
Treinador - coach
Turno - shift; round
Tutor – curator, guardian
Ultimamente - lately, recently
Representantes da União (país) – country repre-
sentatives
Volúvel - fickle, shifty, inconstant

To sum up, vocabulary is an essential tool in L2 reading comprehension.

Thus, it is absolutely essential to teach students that there are cognate
words and false friends between Portuguese and English in order to avoid
generalizations about the similarities of the words. Furthermore, students
should be encouraged to use this reading strategy in order to reach high levels
of reading comprehension (Reed, 2009).

40 • capítulo 2
 ACTIVITY
Read the text below and do the exercise that follows.
A day at work
In the morning I attended a meeting between management and union representatives.
We were anticipating a difficult bargaining but it was actually easy. The discussion was very
comprehensive, covering topics like working hours, days off, retirement age, etc. Both sides were
interested in an agreement and ready to compromise. The secretary recorded everything in the
notes. Eventually, they decided to set a new meeting to sign the final draft of the agreement.
Back at the office, a colleague of mine asked me if I had realized that the proposed
agreement would be partially against the company policy not to accept workers that have
already retired. I pretended to be really busy and late for an appointment, and left for the
cafeteria. Actually, I didn’t want to discuss the matter at that particular moment because
there were some strangers in the office.
After lunch I attended a lecture given by the mayor, who is an expert in tax legislation
and has a graduate degree in political science. He said his government intends to assist
welfare programs and senior citizens, raise funds to improve college education and build
a public library, and establish tougher limits on vehicle emissions because he assumes
this is what the people expect from the government.
(available at: http://sk.com.br/sk-fals.html)

04. Are the bold face terms in the text above cognates or false friends? Which are cognate
words? Which are false friends?
a) Cognate words
b) False friends

INTERNET CONNECTION
To read more about false cognates/ false friends go to:
<http://portaldoprofessor.mec.gov.br/fichaTecnicaAula.html?aula=49121>

capítulo 2 • 41
2.3  Making Inferences and Drawing
Conclusions

According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2003), a conclusion

is “the opinion you have after considering all the information about something”
and an inference is “the opinion or guessing you form that something is true
because of information you have”. In other words, we can say that a conclusion
is a decision about what may happen or about the result of an event, while an
inference is an assumption that you make about something that you see, read,
or experience. Drawing conclusions and making inferences refer to very similar
strategies: each requires the reader to fill in blanks left out by the author. We
draw conclusions and make inferences every day. For example:

•  If your professor writes information on the board during a lecture, you

may conclude it is important information that you may need later and write it
down yourself.
•  If a child runs into a house crying and holding his/her knee, you may infer
that the child may have a knee injury.

Although we may not always be correct in our conclusions and inferences,

they are assumptions that we make based on the clues we have about the
situation or the given context. Let’s take a look a few scenarios:
©© ALLA KAZANTSEVA | DREAMSTIME.COM

Inference Questions
1. What’s the man doing?
2. Where do you think he is?
3. Is he there for work or for pleasure?
Answers:
1. We can see that the man is talking on the
phone.
2. Based on the furniture and decorations he
is probably at the office (at a law firm).
3. Based on his clothing, the books and his
posture/attitude, he is probably there for work.

42 • capítulo 2
 © ANDREWGENN | DREAMSTIME.COM
Inference Questions
1. Where are they?
2. Who’s the man speaking?
3. Are they in the cutting edge?
Answers:
1. The man sitting at the table all dressed in suit,
and the profit table behind them reveals that they are
in an office building, probably in the meeting room.
2. By his position at the table he is an employee (worker) at the company.
3. We can infer by the quotations, and by the profit table that the company is not perfor-
ming well in business and that they are behind in competition.

As we looked at the previous pictures, we were able to draw conclusions or

make inferences about the presented scenarios. As readers, we are also able to
conclude and infer information about texts. Inferential thinking is often referred
to as “reading between the lines”. The reader has to figure out the meaning from
the information that is given in the text the same way that inferring in life itself
we have to figure out answers from facts to which we have access to. Read the
following passage and try the answer the questions that follow.

The air blowing off of the water is
clean and crisp. As she slowly made
her way to her destination, the damp
sand beneath her feet began to sti-
ck to the bottom of her toes. Finally,
she was close enough to see. A blue
and white tablecloth spread over the
sand. Candles, crystal, and china glis-
tened in the light of the setting sun.
She smiled, and a tear ran down her
cheek.
Inference Questions:
1. Where is the woman?
2. What time of the day is it?
3. As she approaches, what does she see?
4. Will she be spending the evening alone?
Answers:
1. Based on the description of the place
described in the text, she is on the beach.
2. It is sunset (the light of the setting sun).
3. We can infer that someone has prepared
a romantic picnic for her.
4. We can logically assume that whomever
has prepared the picnic for her will join her.

capítulo 2  • 43
 Good readers interact with the text without even realizing that they are doing
it. Poor readers, on the other hand, often do not notice that this is what they are
supposed to do if they want to understand the text, that is, (re)construct the
author’s original idea and not only decode the words, sentences and paragraphs
of the text.
Therefore, in order to make inferences and draw conclusions, readers have
to use their previous experiences and prior knowledge about the text they are
going to read. Inferences are evidence-based guesses. They are the conclusions
a reader draws about what is not explicitly stated in a passage based on what was
actually written down by the author. In short, drawing inferences while reading
a text requires willingness to look at the evidence and come to a conclusion that
has not been expressed in words.
In order to be able to read between the lines, the reader must have in mind
the ideas expressed in the text and not only isolated words. Therefore, the
periods should be read as a whole and not read word by word.
This strategy involves an extremely broad category. According to Brown
(1994), readers can make inferences and draw conclusions to their advantage
to:

•  guess the meaning of words,

•  guess a grammatical reference (a pronoun reference, for example),
•  guess a discourse relationship,
•  infer implied meaning (read between the lines),
•  guess about a cultural reference,
•  guess content messages.

In order to be able to make inferences and draw conclusions, the reader is

supposed to use the following resources:

•  Background or previous knowledge: knowledge the reader already has

about the subject of the text.
•  Semantic context: the meaning of the text as a whole, i.e., to guess the
meaning of the words and ideas based on the context, taking into consideration
the words, phrases and sentences which precede and proceed them, and which
contribute to the construction of the text as a whole.

44 • capítulo 2
 •  Linguistic context: clues which determine if the word is a noun, a verb, an
adjective, etc.
•  Non-linguistic context (non-verbal information): information presented
on maps, tables, pictures, drawings and the like (presented below).
•  Knowledge on textual organization: clues and information from the title,
subtitles, thesis statements, etc.

“To infer is to go beyond literal interpretation and to open up a world of meaning that is
deeply connected to one’s life. When learners read and comprehend a text, the whole
world opens up for them. In opening up the world, students learn to read with joy and
understanding, learn and grow through reading, and read critically and thoughtfully.”

(KEENE & ZIMMERMAN, 2006)

2.4  Non-Verbal Information

As we can infer from the title, non-verbal information is any kind of information
provided by an image, such as tables, graphs, maps, figures, pictures, drawing,
photos, etc., which are essentially non-verbal in nature. Many texts contain verbal
as well as non-verbal information. Many genres use forms of data presentation,
other than words, partly to offer an alternative and complementary way of
processing information. Graphic or tabular – or any other form – information
often provides support for the processing of the verbal information. Readers
often need to read both the verbal and non-verbal information to understand
the text fully, especially in order to read the data critically. The words often
describes and interprets the data in the tables in a partial rather than complete
manner, and a different view of results can often be gathered from critical and
detailed analysis of the imagery.
Some texts, such as comic strips, advertising, magazine and newspaper articles
as well as many others, result from the interaction between words and image. In
comic strips, for example, a narrative - words, balloons, images move - is created
with a series of fixed images, arranged in a particular sequence, promoting the
intersection of language and image.  Take a look at the following text:

capítulo 2 • 45
©© STEVEHEAP|DREAMSTIME.COM

The Cherry Trees of Washington, D.C.

When you think about the things that attract millions of visitors to Washington, D.C.,
each year, you probably think about the monuments, the White House, the Capitol, the
Library of Congress. But have you ever thought about the living things that are also a
major tourist attraction?
Many Americans and international tourists make a special visit to Washington, D.C.,
in the spring to see the blooming pink and white Japanese cherry trees that circle
the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial. The trees were originally planted as a
gift from the people of Tokyo, Japan, in 1912. In 1910, a previous donation of 2,000
cherry trees had to be destroyed after they were infested with insects. Each spring,
the National Cherry Blossom Festival, a two-week-long celebration, attracts tens of
thousands of visitors from around the world to see the magnificent trees in full bloom.
Have you ever seen these magnificent blossoms?
(available at: <http://www.americaslibrary.gov/es/dc/es_dc_cherry_1.html.>)

As we can notice from the text above, the words would not be enough to
describe the beauty of the blossom trees. The pictures are essential to actually
show the reader why so many Americans and international tourists visit
Washington D.C. during these two weeks in Spring. In this specific case, non-
verbal information is not essential to the understanding of the text, it just adds
more details and helps convince the reader about the singularity of the National
Cherry Blossom Festival.

46 • capítulo 2
2.5  HINTS: Reading Comprehension
Here are some techniques and strategies for improving your comprehension
skills.
•  Skim: find the gist or main idea.
•  Scan: find specific information or specific reason that is provided in the text.
•  KWL: determine what you Know about the topic, what you Want to know,
and what you Learned.
•  Skip: if you don’t understand a word or section, keep reading ahead.
Come back to the section or word again and try to figure out the meaning. Use
a dictionary if necessary.
•  Look for headings, subtitles and keywords.
•  Identify key words, cognates and false friends.
•  Read out loud: children read out loud when they first start reading. You
can too. Get comfortable hearing your English voice.
•  Make predictions. Guess what a reading will be about. Guess what will
happen next.
•  Identify genre and style. Name the type or category of writing that you read.
•  Write the questions: as you read, think about which questions you might
find on a test or quiz. Write them down and answer them, or quiz a friend.
•  Summarize or retell: you can do this by writing a letter to a friend, writing a
blog post, making a web cam video, or just starting a conversation on this topic.
•  Learn  affixes: knowing  prefixes  and  suffixes  will increase your word
recognition.
•  Keep a vocabulary journal.
(adapted from: <www.englishclub.com/reading/guide-strategies.htm>)

REFLECTION
In this chapter we discussed the relationship between reading purposes and reading
strategies. Knowledge of strategies is important because the greater awareness we have of
what we are doing, if we are aware of the processes underlying the learning we are involved
in, then the learning will be more effective and we get more motivated. Therefore, we talked
about the most important reading strategies among which we can list skimming, scanning,
inference, non-verbal information. Another important reading strategy is dictionary use which
is going to be discussed in chapter 4.

capítulo 2 • 47
 FURTHER READING
GOWER, R. Doing as we would be done. Modern English Teacher, 1999.
NUTTAL, C. Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. Macmillan Hememann, 1996.
WALLACE, C. Reading. Oxford Universtity Press, 1992.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROWN, H. D. Teaching by Principles: an interactive approach to language learning. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Regents, 1994.
CANALE, M.; SWAIN, M. Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language
Teaching and Testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47, 1980.
NUNAN, D. Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1998.
SCARCELLA, R. C.; OXFORD, R. L. The Tapestry of Language Learning: the individual in the
communicative classroom. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1992.

48 • capítulo 2
 3
Reading
Comprehension
Levels: Coherence
and Cohesion
The written language presents three specific features that are particular outs-
tanding for this chapter: it is visual, permanent and the reception is delayed.
It means that the reader of the text can read it over and over again, but will not
have the chance to clarify his doubts or question with the author of the text.
That’s the reason why coherence and cohesion are crucial features to any kind
of text we are going to produce and it is also essential to the texts we are going to
read. Becoming aware and familiar with these two text-forming devices through
explicit teaching is essential to developing good reading and writing skills.

OBJECTIVES
•  To understand the importance of pre-, while-, and post-reading stages.
•  To learn the form, meaning and use of coherence and cohesion devices.
•  To understand the difference between cohesion and coherence.
•  To practice the theory presented in this chapter.

50 • capítulo 3
3.1  Reading Comprehension Stages
Contemporary reading tasks involve three-phase procedures: pre-reading, whi-
le-reading and post-reading stages.
The pre-reading phase should include techniques to activate students’ prior
knowledge (activating schemata), so it includes such strategies as exploiting
the title, drawings, graphs, figures, author, source, lexical items (Once upon a
time…), textual organization (genres), the purposes. Readers can bring the best
of their knowledge and skills to a text when given the chance to move slowly into
the text. In this first reading phase there are some useful cognitive strategies
which can be of great importance to develop reading comprehension skills:

•  Classifying: requires the learner to put vocabulary items into their

semantic groups. Classifying helps students since it is easier to memorize
items that are grouped together in meaningful ways than trying to remember
isolated items.
•  Predicting: helps learners to anticipate what is to come. This results in
more effective learning since students are adequately prepared for the new
reading material.
•  Inductive Reasoning: students are given access to data, and are
provided with structured opportunities to work out rules, principles and, so
on for themselves. The concept here is that information will be more deeply
processed and stored if learners are given an opportunity to work things out for
themselves, rather than simply being told.
•  Inferencing: involves using what students already know to learn
something new. Since learning is basically making links between what is new
and what is already known, inferencing is an extremely important strategy.

The reading phase, or interactive process, itself involves a sense of purpose

since not all reading is simply extensive-global reading. In this phase, the
reader has to project his prior knowledge (schemata) and textual organization
knowledge (the genre in question) in the systematic elements of the text. It is
important for the student to know how to use strategies to link one piece of
information to another, to establish cohesive bonds and to employ inference
strategies.

capítulo 3 • 51
 At the last stage, the post-reading phase, there are a plenty of activities
that may be used in order to enhance reading comprehension: matching
exercises, cloze exercises, cut-up sentences, comprehension questions,
among others.
Most reading sequences involve more than one reading skill. Readers can
start reading a passage to get the gist (main idea) and then read the text again
to retrieve specific information. Or readers can start by reading to identify the
topic of the text before going back to the passage for detailed information.
In summary, there is much evidence that SL/FL readers need to improve
both bottom-up and top-down reading processing. In this chapter we are going
to study two basic text features which are intrinsically related to these processes:
cohesion and coherence.

3.2  Cohesion
Researches on reading comprehension (GUYOTTE, 1997; RICHARDS, 1989)
suggest that cohesive relationships should be taught explicitly. Some sentences
from the text Graffiti and Street Art have been removed. Fill in the gaps with the
appropriate sentence from the box.

•  a. She defended street artists, saying “artists who paint on the street are merely
expressing themselves, not hurting anyone. They should be appreciated and celebrated”.

•  b. In Sao Paulo in Brazil, the city council has even allowed some graffiti artists to paint
on the city’s subway trains.

•  c. Recently, there has been a growing recognition of its value as an art form.

•  d. Then he started tagging in subway stations on the way to and from school.

•  e. This depends on your point of view, but in many countries, writing or painting on
public or private property is considered vandalism.

•  f. These include religious, political and romantic messages, and even some magic
spells.

52 • capítulo 3
 People have been painting and writing on walls throughout history. In
prehistoric times, people in Africa and Europe used to paint pictures of animals
and people in caves. Graffiti has been found on buildings at ancient sites in
Greece, Italy, Syria and Iraq. In the Roman town of Pompeii, archaeologists
have found numerous examples of graffiti written in Latin. ( 1 )
In the late twentieth century, graffiti and street art became an international
phenomenon. In the 1970s, young people in New York used pens to write
their names or “tags” on walls around the city. One of the first “taggers” was
Demetrius, a teenager from a Greek family. Demetrius’s tag was TAKI 183. TAKI
was his nickname and 183 was the number of the street he lived on - 183rd
Street. At first, he wrote his tag on walls in his neighborhood. ( 2 )
When the subway train stopped at a station, he would jump off, write his
tag on the wall and then jump back on before the doors closed. Other teenagers
noticed Demetrius’s tag and started to write their own. Soon, New York’s walls,
buses and subway trains were covered with tags: Barbara 62, Joe 182, etc.
Is graffiti art or vandalism? ( 3 ) Many street artists have been stopped by the
police and some have had to pay fines.
Many city councils complain about the high cost of cleaning graffiti off
buildings, buses and trains. In some countries, councils have tried to encourage
artists not to paint randomly on walls by allowing them to work in designated
areas. In Taiwan, there are “graffiti zones” where artists are free to paint and
write on walls. ( 4 )
And what does the art world think of graffiti and street art?  ( 5 )   There
have been major exhibitions of street art in galleries in Paris, London and Los
Angeles. American artist Elura Emerald organized a street art exhibition at a
New York Gallery in 2008. ( 6 )

(source: <https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/
exams/reading-exams/missing-sentences>)

What is it about the sentences and paragraphs that enables the competent
reader to order them into a coherent and cohesive text? Hoey (1983, 1994)
has researched the interconnections between sentences in discourse and the
contributions they make to text coherence. According to the author, it is the

capítulo 3 • 53
existence of certain “text-forming- devices” within the sentences which means
that most of the sentences present some kind of connection to the previous
one by what are called anaphoric or “back pointing” devices, such as these,
then, she. The meaning of these words can only be determined by words or
phrases in the preceding sentences. The remaining sentences are linked by
simple repetition of words and phrases. The “text-forming” devices of the
removed sentences of the text Graffiti and Street Art are presented in the
following figure.

a) She defended street artists

b) In Sao Paulo
c) its value as an art form.
d) Then he tagging
e) This vandalism.
f) These
(Figure Text – Forming Devices in Graffiti and Street Art)

Now, it is easy to see the interconnection between the sentences: she (in a.)
refers to American artist Elura Emerald; In (São Paulo) refers to the repetition of
the preposition + City in the world (In Taiwan); its value (in c.) refers to graffiti
and street art; then and he (in d.) refers respectively to at first and Demetrius;
this (in e.) refers to whole previous question (is graffiti art or vandalism?); these
(in f.) refers to examples of graffiti. Therefore, the order in which the removed
sentences originally appeared was as follows: 1F – 2D- 3E – 4B – 5C – 6A.
This interconnection shown between sentences and among paragraphs
is referred to as cohesion. These “text-forming devices”, which are words
and phrases that enable the writer to establish relationships across sentence
boundaries, and that help tie the sentences in a text together, are going to be
examined in greater detail in this section.
The most comprehensible description and analysis of these devices can be
found in Halliday and Hasan (1976). The authors identified five different types
of cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.
Later, these five types have been refined and reduced to four (HALIDAY, 1985),
whith substitution considered a subcategory of ellipsis.

54 • capítulo 3
 The following figure sets out the different types of cohesion to be presented
in this section. In each example, the underlined words can only be interpreted
with reference to information given in or retrieved from (ellipted) the text.

Categories Examples

Demonstrative “I did well on the test! This is good news!”

Reference Personal “That’s my boyfriend. He’s a gentleman!”

Comparative “It’s the same car as the one we saw yesterday.”

Nominal “This red coat is Sue’s. Mine is the black one!”

Substitution Verbal “I think John already knows. Actually, everybody does”

and Ellipsis
Clausal “For he’s a jolly good fellow and so say all of us.”

Adversative “It was cold. However, we still went swimming.”

Additive “It was cold and we decided to invite some friends over.”
Conjunction
Temporal “First I went to the bank. Then I went to the airport.”
Causal “It was very hot. Therefore, they went swimming.”

Reiteration “Could you pass me the salt? The salt is on your right.”
Lexical
Cohesion Collocation “The hospital was crowded. The nurses were shouting and
the doctors were going up and down the corridor in a hurry.

(adapted from Nunan, 1999, p.119)

3.2.1 Reference

Reference is a property of items when “instead of being interpreted semantically

in their own right, they make reference to something else for their interpretation”
(Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p.31). It means that if we take a single sentence out of
context and present it in isolation, the chances it contains elements that are
difficult, if not impossible, to interpret are high. Consider the following fragment:

“A man with wide interests and deep passions, he is finally happily married.”

Who is this mysterious man who has wide interests and who is now happily
married at last? In the above fragment the pronoun he is uninterpretable.

capítulo 3  • 55
However, if we have access to the context to which the sentence belongs, we can
easily retrieve the identity of the man.
“His eccentric habits are known to the world, but the Prince of Wales has
every reason to feel content. A man with wide interests and deep passions, he
is finally happily married.” (The life of a hardworking future king – American
Headway 3, 2011, p.14)
In the above excerpt, the words his, Prince of Wales, man and he all refer to a
single individual whose identity is stablished in the context. This kind of device
is known as cohesive reference.

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), there are three types of cohesive
reference: personal, demonstrative, and comparative reference.

•  Personal reference, such as those in the excerpt above, is realized by

pronouns and determiners and they identify individuals and objects that are
named at some other part of the text.
•  Demonstrative reference is realized by determiners and adverbs. This
class of reference items can represent a single word or phrase, or much longer
chunks of text ranging across several paragraphs or even several pages.

“Please, fill this form out.” → “Please, fill this out”

“I live in a skyscraper just across the street. That is a safe place!

•  Comparative reference is realized through adjectives and adverbs and is

used to compare item within a text in terms of identity or similarity. The various
devices make it possible to writers to make multiple references to people and
things within a text.

“There are twice as many people there as the last time.”

Reference words can refer back to previously mentioned entities, known as

“anaphoric reference”, or they can refer to things that point forward to things
that are to come, known as “cataphoric reference”.

“Susan asked Alex to pass her the salt” (her refers backwards to Susan)

“Near her, Susan saw a snake” (her refers forwards to Susan)

56 • capítulo 3
 While anaphoric reference reminds readers of what has gone before,
cataphoric reference points them forward. It therefore draws them further into
the text in order to identify the elements to which the items refer.

3.2.2  Substitution and Ellipsis

Substitution and ellipsis differ from reference in that rather than being a relation
between meanings, i.e., semantic, they signal a relation between wordings.
Halliday and Hasan (1976) deal with substitution and ellipsis separately,
although they point out that these two types of cohesion are essentially the
same. Ellipsis is described as a form of substitution in which the original item
is replace by zero. In a later book (1985), Halliday combines substitution and
ellipsis into a single category. There are three types of substitution: nominal,
verbal and clausal.

Nominal Substitution
“I have to buy a new car. The old one is still running, but we want to take
a couple of long, cross-country trips this year.” (Pronoun one substitutes the
word car)

Verbal Substitution
A: I think you work too hard!
B: So do you! (do = work hard too)

Clausal Substitution
A: Are you feeling better?
B: I think so. (so = feeling better)
In each of these examples, part of the preceding text has been replaced by
one, do, and so, respectively, as indicated in parentheses. Each of these words
can only be interpreted with respect to what has been written or said before.

Ellipsis occurs when some essential structural element is omitted from a

sentence or clause and can only be recovered by referring to an element in the
preceding text. In the following examples, rather than substituting a sentence
item by a ‘counter’ such as one or do, nothing is placed in the relevant position.
Ellipsis, like substitution, can be nominal, verbal or clausal.

capítulo 3 • 57
 Nominal Ellipsis
“We are out of drink and need to buy some.” (the noun drink is ellipted so
that we have some rather than some drink)

Verbal Ellipsis
A: Have you noticed?
B: Yes, dear, of course I have. (the verb noticed is ellipted)

Clausal Ellipsis
A: Have you never tried a piece of this pie?
B: No. (the clause I have never tried a piece of this pie myself is fully ellipted)

In summary, these elements are all cohesive in that they require other aspects
of the context in which they occur to be present in order to be interpretable.
Without context, interpretation is impossible.

3.2.3  Conjunction

Conjunction differs from reference, substitution and ellipsis because it is

not a device for referring the reader to items that are mentioned in the text.
Nevertheless, conjunction is a cohesive device since it signals relationships that
can only be fully understood in relation to other parts of the text. According to
Halliday and Hasan (1976), there are four types of conjunction and they signal
adversative, additive, temporal and causal relationships.

Adversative
“Hanna’s mother gave her some good advice. Nevertheless, she did not
follow it.” (the information in the second sentence is contrasted with the idea
presented in the first sentence showing an "unexpected result")

Additive
“No, their lives weren’t dull. And they had suddenly taken the dullness out of
hers.” (in this case the coordinating conjunction and signals the presentation
of additional information)

58 • capítulo 3
 Temporal
“Bick tea is a blend that has been compressed into a cake. It is taken mainly
by the minority groups in China. First, it is ground to a dust. Then, it is usually
cooked in milk.” (there is temporal relationship whenever the events in a text
are related in terms of the timing of their occurrence)

Causal
“Chinese tea is becoming increasingly popular in restaurants, and even in
coffee shops. This is because of the growing belief that it has several health
giving properties.” (in this kind of conjunction, the relationship is one of cause
and consequence)

Even though in further publications (HALLIDAY; 1985, 1994) these first four
categories have been reworked and extended, for our practical purposes this
information is enough.

3.2.4  Lexical Cohesion

Lexical cohesion is the last category. It occurs when two words in a text are
semantically related in some way. In other words, they are related in terms
of their meaning. According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the two major
subcategories of lexical cohesion are reiteration and collocation. Reiteration
includes repetition, a synonym or close synonym, superordinate, and general
words. In the sentences below, the words in italics have the function of
reiterating the previous item (underlined) from the main sentence:

Edward got a street young dog.

Repetition: The dog had almost been killed in an accident.
Synonym: The puppy had almost been killed in an accident.
Superordinate1: The domestic mammal had almost been killed in an accident.
General Word: The animal had almost been killed in an accident.

The second kind of lexical cohesion is collocation. Halliday and Hasan (1976)
use the term collocation to refer to the expectation that other words will occur in
a text (oral or written) once a particular word has occurred. Thus, the word doctor
occurs in ongoing text, one might expect other words such as hospital, nurse,

1  The same as hyperonym

capítulo 3 • 59
patients, treatment, and medication to occur. The concept of collocation given by
the authors can be compared to the concept of frames used in Cognitive Linguistics.
Lexical cohesion through collocation is something that should be carefully
taken into consideration when writing a text because it can cause major
problems for discourse analysis in reading due to the fact that it involves
the use of words in a text that are semantically related. Many linguists admit
that it is difficult to define collocation, but point out that “its contribution to
coherence in text is so significant that it cannot be ignored” (MARTIN, 1981).
The problems arise because, in contrast with other categories, lexical cohesion
is realized through open rather than closed items. Closed lexical items include
pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and other grammatical categories,
membership of which is fixed. In contrast, there is no limit to the items that
can realize lexical relationships.
Lexical cohesion is, in many ways, the most interesting of all the cohesive
categories. The background knowledge of the reader plays a more important
role in the perception of lexical relationships than in the perception of other
kinds of cohesion. One of the difficulties to analyze these relationships in a
text has to do with how many steps away an item can be in taxonomy and still
contribute to cohesion. For example, rose and flower seem more closely related
than rose and plant, and though one would accept mosquito and insect one
wonders about mosquito and animal. Are the latter words too far apart in the
taxonomy to be related?

3.3  Coherence
Since the written text does not include the use of so many pre-fixed or semi-fixed
word strings known as chunks of language or formulaic expressions, nor does
written language include a lot of redundancy, it particularly has to be not only
cohesive, as we have seen in the previous section, but also coherent. Coherent
texts make sense because the reader can follow the sequence of thoughts and
ideas. Textual coherence is also related to the ways in which information is
printed in a text. According to Hoey (1983), the ordering of information in a
discourse can be accounted in terms of certain rhetorical structure such as cause-
consequence, problem-solution. The rhetorical structure of a text refers to the
organization of a text and the choices the writer makes by including a particular

60 • capítulo 3
piece of information. It is also important to understand the author’s purpose in
choosing a particular organization. The author uses the following four sentences
to illustrate the ways in which these rhetorical relationships function in discourse.

I opened fire2.
I was on sentry duty3.
I beat off the attack4.
I saw the enemy approaching5.

These four sentences can be sequenced in twenty-four different ways.

However, some of these sequences are not going to be accepted as coherent
discourse. If you write, for example “I beat off attack. I opened fire. I saw the enemy
approaching. I was sentry duty.” The text will not be considered acceptable. In
fact, according to Hoey, only one sequence is completely acceptable: “I was on
sentry duty. I saw the enemy approaching. I opened fire. I beat off the attack.”
Nevertheless, the twenty-four different combinations could probably be graded
on a continuum from completely unacceptable to completely acceptable. These
constrains on the ordering of information are due in part because there is a
particular type of relationship among the elements:
I was on sentry duty
Cause – I saw the enemy approaching. – consequence – I opened fire. –
Instrument – I opened fire. – achievement – I beat off the attack.

There are in fact grammatical devices that can be employed to change the
sequencing of the information in the text in acceptable ways. These include
subordination: “while I was on sentry duty, I opened fire, because I saw the
enemy approaching. I beat off the attack.”

CONNECTION
Rhetorical Structure: While reading a text, pay attention to the rhetorical structure of a
text as a whole, including description, classification (describing types of things in a group),
comparison and contrast, narrative (telling a story in chronological order), and persuasion
(arguing in favor or against something).

2  Eu abri fogo.
3  Eu estava de sentinela.
4  Eu impedi o ataque.
5  Eu vi o inimigo se aproximando.
capítulo 3 • 61
3.3.1  Discourse Connectors/Markers

There are many discourse markers, also known as signal words or connectors,
in English that signal relationships among ideas as expressed through phrases,
clauses, and sentences. Important types of discourse connector are: coordinating
conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, so and yet); subordinating conjunctions
(because, although, if, unless, now that, etc) and transitions (however, therefore,
in addition, in fact, first, finally, etc). A clear comprehension of such markers
can greatly enhance learner’s reading efficiency. These connectors can be of
much help for readers to understand how information is organized in the text
and show the relationship between ideas. The following table includes almost
one hundred of these markers that learners of intermediate proficiency levels
should be familiar with.

EMPHASIS CONCLUSION COMPARISON EXAMPLE

In short / For example/

As a matter of fact/ In the same way/
In conclusion / For instance/
In fact/Actually/ Likewise/
In summary/ Finally/ e.g./ i.e./
Indeed Similarly/
To sum up (por exemplo)
(realmente, de fato) (da mesma forma)
(finalmente, em such as (tal como)
resumo) like (como)

TIME CONTRAST ADDITION CAUSE

but (mas)
and (e)
Although/Though
furthermore,
When (quando) (embora)
in addition, because
While (enquanto)
moreover/besides, (porque / por causa de)
First/Second/Third However/Yet/
(além disso) Therefore/
(primeiro/Segundo/ Nevertheless,
in addition to Thus/
Terceiro) (Entretanto)
as well as Because of this/
Finally (finalmente)
(além de) (portanto)
Formerly Despite/In spite of
also/too/as well So (assim)
(anteriormente) (Apesar de)
(também) So that (a fim de que)
Nowadays/ On the other hand
both… and… Consequently/
Currently (Por outro lado)
(tanto…quanto…) As a result
(atualmente) While/Whereas
not only… (consequentemente)
Afterwards (Enquanto que)
but also… Since (visto que)
(posteriormente) Still (ainda)
(não apenas…
Instead of
mas também…)
(ao invés de)

62 • capítulo 3
 As you can notice, there are various methods which can be used to connect
ideas together in order to have a cohesive and coherent text. In the following
paragraph, some of these methods have been used: (1) repeating a key word;
(2) rephrasing the key word – lexical cohesion; (3) referring to a word with a
pronoun; and (4) adding a discourse marker.

Although much has been said about the evils of watching too much television, I would
like to make a case in support of the benefits of television. In a variety of ways, television
helps to keep us aware of what is going on around the world. The first way in which this
modern marvel device increases our awareness is through the news. Through it, we can
keep up with the latest happenings from all around the world and even from our back
yard. Television keeps us aware not only of the facts which turned out news, but also
of people’s opinions. Through talk shows, documentaries about famous people’s lives
and even interviews, it helps us to get acquainted with many issues that are going on in
today’s society and how other citizens feel about them. A final way that television helps
us to keep aware of our surroundings is showing current trends, styles, and spreading
slangs commonly used nowadays. By watching television programs, we can keep up
with what people are doing, what they are wearing, and what they are saying.

This paragraph, written by a high intermediate student, contains numerous

examples of devices that make the paragraph more linked. (1) the key word
television has been repeated many times, rephrased as this modern marvel
device, and replaced by the pronoun it. (2) The expression keep us aware has
been repeated and paraphrased as get acquainted, keep up with, awareness all
over the paragraph. (3) The discourse markers the first way and the final way
are used to introduce the first benefit of television (awareness of … news) and
the third benefit of television (awareness of current trends). (4) The sentence
keeps us aware not only of the facts which turned out news, but also of people’s
opinions relates the first benefit of television (awareness of … news) and the
second benefit of television (awareness of other people’s feelings).
To sum up, cohesiveness of a text is one of the important dimensions along
which text varies. Cohesiveness of a text, an objective feature of texts, is an
important factor to determine text coherence, which is a subjective psychological
state of a reader (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). When comprehending a text, readers

capítulo 3 • 63
must establish and maintain coherence between sentences (Oakhill, Cain, &
Bryant, 2003). When reading a highly cohesive text, the majority of information
necessary to maintain text coherence is provided by the text itself.

3.3.2  Functional Coherence

So far we have talked about some of the linguistic elements that help to
establish cohesion and consequently coherence of language in texts. However,
these devices are not always a guarantee that the text or the paragraph or even
the sentence will be understood by the reader. Nor does the absence of these
linguistic devices mean that the reader will not understand the text. Consider
the following conversation.
A: Where is Jennifer?
B: Her recital is next Saturday
A: That’s right! I had forgotten about it!

Although this piece of conversation does not contain much explicit

information nor cohesive devices, the listener understands the message and
most people would agree that it makes sense, i.e., it is coherent. And it makes
sense because it is possible to create a context at a functional level: request →
explanation → acceptance
Information requested: Where is Jennifer? (could you tell me where Jennifer
is right now?)
Explanation given: Her recital is next Saturday (She is going to play the violin
with the orchestra next Saturday, so she is rehearsing right now.)
Explanation accepted: That’s right! I had completely forgotten about it!

In this specific dialog, coherence is stablished through the creation of a

meaningful context in which the interlocutors, who are competent users of the
language, identify the functions of each utterance and coherence is established.

However, if interlocutors fail to identify the functions involved in the

conversation, miscommunication occurs at the level of the discourse, even
though the sentences are well built. Consider the following conversation.

64 • capítulo 3
 Context: two co-workers at the end of a shift in a factory
Native speaker: See you later.
Non-native speaker: Really? What time?
Native speaker: What do you mean?

As we can notice in the previous conversation, there is no linguistic

problem and the sentences and questions are correct and well formed. The
miscommunication occurs at the level of the discourse, since one of the
interlocutors, being non-native speaker, did not recognize the function of see
you later and interpreted it literally instead of figuratively. Functions refer to
what items of language actually do in a real context, as opposed to what they
might mean literally. These include suggesting, criticizing, refusing, agreeing
and disagreeing, enquiring, apologizing, inviting, etc.

ACTIVITIES
01. Use the discourse markers given in the box to complete the gaps.

after Although As as a result of because of despite

so as to so that such a that when

1. _______ I was walking down 3rd Av. I met my friend Antonio who bought me a pizza
2. He could read and write ________being blind.
3. he had given up cigarettes; he still smoked a cigar at special occasions.
4. They changed all the chairs in the office keep all workers happy.
5. We called the ambulance seeing the accident was really serious.
6. Many countries in the world don’t have enough food serious social and
political problems.
7. They lost the match their poor physical preparation.
8. Please give a ring your mother gets home, I would like to talk to her.
9. We wrote a letter to everybody, they had all the necessary information.
10. There was mess after the party we had to pay somebody
to do the cleaning

capítulo 3 • 65
02. In the following letter the linking words and phrases are missing. Choose the most
appropriate phrase from the ones given below.

Dear Harry,

Remember that I told you I was trying to get a job at ICTL?

(1) , I finally managed to get one! Of course, I haven't been working

there long, (2) I can already tell that it's a wonderful place to work.

All the staff, (3) the directors, are very friendly with everybody,

and (4) , they have marvelous facilities for the employees.

(5) , there's a bar and gym, and lots of other things.

I'm called the Safety Equipment Officer. It (6) sound like an

impressive title, but it's not a very accurate description of what I do. My main job is to

provide protective clothing, (7) overalls, helmets, and so on. I

estimate what the different departments will need, and (8) I order

it from the suppliers.

(9) I make sure that the various departments have everything they

want. (10) , stationery is also my responsibility.

(11) , I have to supply all the offices with paper, envelopes, and

so on. I find the job very interesting (12) I get the chance to go

all over the factory and to meet everybody. (13) the pay is a lot

better than in my old job.

(14 , that's my news. What about yours? Drop me a line when you

have time. Regards to your family, and best wishes to you.

Terry

66 • capítulo 3
1. a) Then b) Well c) And

2. a) but b) because c) so

3. a) until b) and c) even

4. a) so b) what’s nice c) on the other hand

5. a) For instance b) However c) Even

6. a) can b) could c) may

7. a) such as b) namely c) as

8. a) then b) after c) so

9. a) By the way b) Anyway c) In this way

10. a) However b) Although c) But

11. a) Secondly b) In other words c) Also

12. a) why b) because c) then

13. a) Besides b) Beside c) On the other hand

14. a) At the end b) Anyway c) After all

REFLECTION
In this chapter we have talked about text cohesion and coherence. The concept of text in
linguistics is related to any written or spoken passage of whatever length that forms a unified
whole. The unified whole, which we call texture, is created by cohesion and coherence.
Therefore, a text must have linguistic cohesion as well as semantic coherence, and sentences
in a coherent text must “conform to the picture of one possible world in the experience or
imagination of the receiver” (Enkvist, 1978).

capítulo 3 • 67
 FURTHER READING
CELCE-MURCIA, M.; OLSHTAIN, E. Discourse and Context in Language Teaching. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
HALLIDAY, M. A. K.; HASAN, R. Cohesion in English. New York: Longman, 1976.
HALLIDAY, M. A. K.; HASAN, R. Language, Context and Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. Grammar Dimensions: Form, Meaning and Use. Boston: Heinle & Heinle,
1995.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROWN, H. D. Teaching by Principles: an interactive approach to language learning. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Regents, 1994.
CANALE, M.; SWAIN, M. Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language
Teaching and Testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47, 1980.
HARMER, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 3rd edition, England: Longman, 2001.
NUNAN, D. Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1999.
SCARCELLA, R. C.; OXFORD, R. L. The Tapestry of Language Learning: the individual in the
communicative classroom. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1992.

68 • capítulo 3
 4
English Lexicon:
Form and Meaning
Language study described in this chapter focuses on the structure and use of
lexical units, ordinarily known as words, particularly in relation to word forma-
tion which includes inflection and derivation, which are two functional catego-
ries of lexical processes. Therefore, we are going to learn about affixes, roots,
and the lexicogrammar perspective of the language (HALLIDAY, 1994). We are
also going to talk about polysemy and dictionary use.

OBJECTIVES
•  To learn the difference between inflection and derivation in English.
•  To learn the affixes (suffixes and prefixes) of English.
•  To learn some common English roots, their meanings and origins.
•  To understand the importance of lexicon knowledge to the reading process.

70 • capítulo 4
4.1  Form and Meaning: the relationship
between Grammar and the Lexicon

The lexicon has been defined as a mental inventory of words and productive
word derivational processes. We consider the lexicon of a language to include
not only single words but also word compounds and conventionalized
multiword phrases, also known as chunks.
If on the one hand, the lexicon is composed by all the lexical items or word
forms a language contains, on the other hand, vocabulary is a list of words that
an individual knows or uses regularly. Vocabulary is different from lexicon
because vocabulary is about what an individual or group of people know,
whereas lexicon is about the language itself.
Let’s take a look at the following lexical items:

die, expire, pass away, bite the dust, kick the bucket, give up the ghost

The six examples are synonymous, whose meaning is to die. Nevertheless,

they are made up of from one to four words. Die and expire are single words, pass
away can be labeled a phrasal verb, and the last three are idiomatic expressions1.
Thus there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between a meaning
and a single word.
To handle these chunks of language, the term lexical unit or lexical item
(lexeme) was coined. These three interchangeable terms are all defined as “an
item that functions as a single meaning unit, regardless of the number of words
it contains.” Therefore, all of the six examples above are lexemes with the same
meaning.
In addition to the possible lack of correspondence between individual
words and individual meaning, the term word also brings difficulties for the
various grammatical and morphological forms of a lexeme: should learn,
learned, learning and learns be considered and counted as a unique word or
four? Likewise, are communicate, communication and communicative the same
word? In these examples, there is a root word that is the simplest form of that
word. To this root, affixes are added. If the purpose of the affixes is grammatical,
then the resulting word is called an inflection. Learned, learning and learns are

1  An idiomatic expression, or idiom, is a string of words which taken together has a different meaning than the
individual component words. Similarly, a phrasal verb is made up of a verb plus one or more words, called particles,
which also has an idiosyncratic meaning compared to the component words.
capítulo 4 • 71
inflections of the root word learn. However, if the affixes change the grammatical
category (part of speech) of a root, the result is a derivative. Thus communication
(noun) and communicative (adjective) are derivatives of communicate (verb). It
is clear that although these words have different orthographic (written) forms,
they are closely related in meaning. Sets of words like these are referred to as
word families. A word family is usually held to include the root word, all of its
inflections, and its common derivatives. There is evidence that the mind groups
the members of a word family together, giving a psychological justification for
using word families as a unit for counting and teaching.

4.2  Vocabulary and Grammar: The

Lexicogrammar Perspective of English

Traditionally, grammar and lexicon were considered two distinct components

of the language, and indeed they still are treated as such in some grammatical
theories. From the pedagogical perspective as well, vocabulary and grammar
have usually been viewed as two different areas of language. Some recent
theories, however, have considered grammar and lexicon as opposite poles
of one continuum, and following Halliday (1994), we are going to take the
lexicogrammar perspective of the language, in which the many multiword
lexical units, such as How do you do? and I’m looking forward to seeing you again
soon, for example, conform to the grammar of the language.
Grammar ------------------------------ Lexicon

When we focus on the extremes at the ends of the continuum, the

dichotomy between grammar and lexicon seems to hold: at the grammatical
end we can include function words such as prepositions, articles and auxiliary
verbs; whereas at the other end we can include content words such as main
verbs (e.g., grow) and nouns (e.g., flowers). Recent work in computer analyses
of large corpora of English texts suggest that many patterned multiword
lexical units such as by the way are basic intermediate units between lexis
(words) and grammar: in English the lexical grammar order is always by the
way, not way by the. The grammaticality of the lexicon also manifests itself
in word morphology, that is, the grammatical particles that we attach to

72 • capítulo 4
the beginning (prefixes) and ends of words (suffixes) in order to change the
meaning and most of the times the function of the word in a sentence. That
is why in the next sections we are going to talk more about affixes, which
can be prefixes and suffixes, and roots, which are the essential core, the
element that carries the main component of meaning in a word and provides
the basis from which a word is derived by adding affixes or inflectional endings.

4.3  The Form of Words – Affixes

Vocabulary or lexical items, whether one-word or multiword, can often be
broken down into their component ‘bits’. Exactly how these bits are put together
is a useful piece of information a person must master in order to know a word
(NATION, 1991), which includes identifying the word’s part of speech (noun,
adjective, verb or adverb) and the semantic perspective, both of which can be
inferred from the word’s affixes.
Affixes are bound morphemes which are attached or affixed to words. They
can be divided into two types: morphemes that have more lexical content,
referred to as derivational morphemes, and those that are more grammatical in
function, referred to as inflectional morphemes, although the line between the
two is sometimes hard to draw.
Derivational affixes can be prefixes (e.g., unhappy) and suffixes (e.g.,
happiness). When the part of the speech changes, as in our example when
the verb communicate becomes the noun communication or the adjective
communicative, this is usually the result of adding a suffix rather than a prefix.
Prefixes, on the other hand, only change the meaning of the root, not its class.
Prefixes fall into a number of semantic classes in English, depending on the
meaning that they contribute to the root. Which affix attaches to which root is
always quite arbitrary and unpredictable; it is not a matter of rule but must be
stated separately for each root (as, for example, in a dictionary).
If a morpheme simply adds some element of meaning required by grammar
and changes the form of a word without changing its basic part of speech,
then it is called an inflectional morpheme. An example of an inflectional
ending would be the addition of –ing to the verb learn in I am learning a foreign
language. Learn remains a verb after the –ing has been affixed, but the suffix
adds a grammatical meaning, i.e, that the action is an ongoing one. There are
eight inflectional affixes in English.

capítulo 4 • 73
 Four of them involve verbs:
•  Present participle (learning)
•  Present tense – third person singular (learns)
•  Past tense (learned)
•  Past participle (forgotten)

Two are added to nouns:

•  Possessive (Sue’s)
•  Plural (books)

And two come at the end of adjectives and adverbs:

•  Comparative (fatter – faster)
•  Superlative (fattest – fastest)

As you can notice, they are all suffixes. The only inflectional affixes that are
not suffixes involve the irregular forms (plurals, past tenses, past participles,
comparatives, superlatives), which go under internal vowel changes, no changes
at all, or some completely different and historically unrelated (i.e., suppletive2)
form. Examples:
Internal vowel change: mouse – mice (plural)
ring – rang (past tense) – past participle (rung)

No change: one deer – several deer (zero plural)

hit – hit – hit (zero past tense and past participle)

Suppletive form: go – went; be – was/ were (past tense)

good – better (comparative) – best (superlative)

Knowing the inflectional suffixes and understanding their use is essential

to mastering the basic grammar structures we have in English, since they are
related to verb tenses, subject – verb agreement (inflectional suffix –s referring

2  In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form
of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as
“irregular” or even “highly irregular”. The term “suppletion” implies that a gap in the paradigm was filled by a form
“supplied” by a different paradigm. Instances of suppletion are overwhelmingly restricted to the most commonly-used
lexical items in a language.

74 • capítulo 4
to the third person singular (learns) and plural nouns used as subject (books)),
possessives, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs.

4.4  Word Roots in English

A root, as its name suggests, is a word or word part from which other words
grow, usually through the addition of prefixes and suffixes. The root of the
word vocabulary, for example, is voc, a Latin root meaning “word” or “name.”
This root also appears in the words advocacy, convocation, evocative, vocal, and
vociferous.
Root denotes the morpheme that makes the most precise and concrete
contribution to the meaning of a word. The root of a complex word3 is usually
free. However, there are roots that are bound. The fact of being bound may
make a bound root harder to be identified and isolated as a morpheme than a
free root.
Understanding the meanings of the common word roots can help us deduce
the meanings of new words that we encounter. But be careful: root words can
have more than one meaning and various shades of meaning. In addition,
words that look similar may derive from different roots. So when you meet up
with a new word, be sure to rely on a dictionary to check its definition.
The table below defines and illustrates 30 of the most common Greek and
Latin roots. The letter in parentheses indicates whether the root word is Greek
(G) or Latin (L).

ROOT MEANING EXAMPLES

-ast(er)-(G) star asteroid, astronomy

-audi- (L) hear audible, audience

-auto- (G) self automatic, autopsy

-bene- (L) good benefit, benign

-bio- (G) life biography, biology

3  Complex words can be formed out of one or more

(i) bound roots – legible, magnify, derive (verb) + tion = derivation (noun) + al = derivational (adjective)
(ii) free roots – readable, bookcase, truck-driver.

capítulo 4 • 75
 -chrono- (G) time chronic, synchronize

-dict- (L) say dictate, diction

-duc- (L) lead, make deduce, produce

-gen- (L) give birth gene, generate

-geo- (G) earth geography, geology

-graph- (G) write autograph, graph

-jur-, -jus- (L) law jury, justice

-log-, -logue- (L) thought logic, obloquy

-luc- (L) light lucid, translucent

-man(u)- (L) hand manual, manure

-mand-, -mend- (L) order demand, recommend

-mis-, -mit- (L) send missile, transmission

-omni- (L) all omnivorous

-path- (G) feel empathy, pathetic

-phil- (G) love philosophy, bibliophile

-phon- (G) sound phonics, telephone

-photo- (G) light photograph, photon

-port- (L) carry export, portable

-qui(t)- (L) quiet, rest acquit, tranquil

-scrib-, -script- (L) write ascribe, script

-sens-, -sent- (L) feel resent, sensitive

-tele- (G) far off telecast, telephone

-terr- (L) earth terrain, territory

-vac- (L) empty evacuate, vacate

-vid-, -vis- (L) see visible, video

4.5  Derivational Affixation

Derivational affixes are also bound morphemes that combine with the root
forms to derive new words. Derivational affixes can be prefixes, which often
change the meaning (e.g., unconscious, disorder), or suffixes, which usually
change the grammatical category (part of speech) of the word root (washable,
childish). In fact, it is possible for a word root to have both a derivational prefix

76 • capítulo 4
and suffix (unthinkable) or more than one suffix (government al). There are
more suffixes than prefixes in English.
In order to help you expand your productive and receptive vocabulary, we
will study the most common and useful derivational suffixes. Understanding
the meanings of the common suffixes can help us deduce the meanings of new
words that we encounter.
The table below defines and illustrates 26 common suffixes.

ADJECTIVE SUFFIXES
-able, -ible capable of being edible, presentable
-al pertaining to regional
-esque reminiscent of picturesque
-ful notable for fanciful
-ic, -ical pertaining to musical, mythic
-ious, -ous characterized by nutritious, portentous
-ish having the quality of fiendish
-ive having the nature of creative
-less without endless
-y characterized by sleazy

NOUN SUFFIXES
Suffix Meaning Example

-acy state or quality privacy

-al act or process of refusal

-ance, -ence state or quality of maintenance, eminence

-dom place or state of being freedom, kingdom

-er, -or one who trainer, protector

-ism doctrine, belief communism

-ist one who chemist

-ity, -ty quality of veracity

-ment condition of argument

-ness state of being heaviness

-ship position held fellowship

-sion, -tion state of being concession, transition

capítulo 4 • 77
 VERB SUFFIXES
-ate become eradicate

-en become enlighten

-ify, -fy make or become terrify

-ize, -ise become civilize

(source: http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/comsuffixes.htm)

A prefix is a letter or a group of letters attached to the beginning of a word

that partly indicates its meaning. For example, the word prefix itself begins with
a prefix--pre-, which generally means “before.”
Understanding the meanings of the common prefixes can help us deduce
the meanings of new words that we encounter. But be careful: some prefixes
(such as in-) have more than one meaning (in this example, “not” and “into”).
The table below defines and illustrates 35 common prefixes.

PREFIX MEANING EXAMPLE

a-, an- without amoral

ante- before antecedent

anti- against anticlimax

auto- self autopilot

circum- around circumvent

co- with copilot

com-, con- with companion, contact

contra- against contradict

de- off, away from devalue

dis- not disappear

en- put into enclose

ex- out of, former extract, ex-president

extra- beyond, more than extracurricular

hetero- different heterosexual

homo- same homonym

hyper- over, more hyperactive

78 • capítulo 4
 illegal, immoral, inconsiderate, irrespon-
il-, im-, in-, ir- not, without
sible
in- into insert

inter- between intersect

intra- between intravenous

macro- large macroeconomics

micro- small microscope

mono- one monocle

non- not, without nonentity

omni- all, every omniscient

post- after postmortem

pre-, pro- before, forward precede, project

sub- under submarine

syn- same time synchronize

trans- across transmit

tri- three tricycle

un- not unfinished

uni- one unicorn

(source: http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/comprefix07.htm)

4.6  Suffixes to Form Adjectives

4.6.1  Adjectives from noun or verbs: -able /-abl (also -ible in some
words)

-able /-abl /-ible are suffixes that are used to make many adjectives from
nouns or verbs:
enjoy – enjoyable knowledge – knowledgeable (= knows a lot)
comfort – comfortable suit – suitable (= right/correct for a particular
situation)

Quite often, -able (and -ible) has the meaning ‘can be done’.

comprehend – comprehensible (can be comprehended or understood)

capítulo 4 • 79
 drink – drinkable (can be drunk)
rely – reliable (can be relied on or trusted)
wash – washable (can be washed)

4.6.2  Adjectives from noun or verbs: –ous/ –al / –y / –ive

danger – dangerous fame – famous

politics – political industry – industrial
sun – sunny dirt – dirty
attract – attractive create – creative

4.6.3  Adjectives from nouns: –ful / –less

The suffix -ful often means ‘full of’:

care – careful (full of care) pain – painful (full of pain)
help – helpful (full of help) use – useful
thought – thoughtful (someone who is thoughtful is kind and always thinks
about others; a thoughtful action shows care for others).
The suffix -less means ‘without’:
care – careless (without care) pain – painless
use – useless ( has no use or function) thought – thoughtless
home – homeless (= with nowhere to live) job – jobless

Note: You can see that -ful and -less are often used with the same words to
form opposites. This is not always true: a person with a home is NOT homeful.

4.7  Suffixes to Form Nouns

4.7.1  Nouns from adjectives: -ness

-ness is one of a number of noun suffixes. It is used to make nouns from

adjectives, although not every adjective can be modified in this way. Here are
some common adjectives whose noun forms are made by adding -ness:

happy – happiness ready – readiness

80 • capítulo 4
 sad – sadness tidy – tidiness
weak – weakness forgetful – forgetfulness
good – goodness

4.7.2  Nouns from adjectives: -ity

-ity  is another noun suffix that is formed from adjectives. Here are some
adjectives whose noun forms are made in this way:
complex – complexity probable – probability
hilarious – hilarity responsible – responsibility
possible – possibility scarce – scarcity

4.7.3  Nouns from verbs: -tion / -sion

-tion, or, less frequently  -sion  (both pronounced with a / ʃ / sound on the
initial letter) are noun suffixes that are used to make nouns from verbs. Here
are some common verbs whose noun forms are made by adding -tion:
Note that adjustments that are necessary to the spelling in each case:
admit – admission describe – description
alter – alteration inform - information
decide – decision multiply – multiplication

4.7.4  Nouns from verbs and adjectives: -ment

-ment  is another suffix that is used to make nouns from verbs and
occasionally from adjectives:
appoint - appointment merry – merriment
arrange – arrangement replace – replacement
enjoy – enjoyment

4.7.5  Nouns from adjectives and verbs: -ance / -ence

-ance  and  -ence  are suffixes that are used to make nouns from adjectives
and sometimes from verbs:
absent – absence exist – existence silent – silence
admit – admittance important – importance
appear – appearance independent – independence

capítulo 4 • 81
4.7.6  Nouns from nouns: more restrictive noun suffixes

Note: Not all derivational processes change word class. Here are some examples
of some suffixes used to form nouns derived from nouns their possible
meanings:
-let, -ette, -ie: ‘small’
droplet, booklet, cigarette, doggie

-ess, -ine: ‘female’

waitress, princess, heroine

-er, -(i)an: ‘inhabitant of X’

Londoner, New Yorker, Texan, Glaswegian

-ship, -hood: ‘state of being an X’

kingship, ladyship, motherhood, priesthood

-ist, -ian: ‘devotee of or expert on X’

contortionist, Marxist, logician, historian

4.8  Suffixes to Form Verbs

1. Verbs from adjectives and nouns: –ize/ -ise / -(i)fy / -ate/ -en
–ize/ -ise: prioritize/ prioritise , publicize/ publicise, centralize/ centralise
-(i)fy: pacify, simplify, purify, beautify, petrify
-ate: generate, rotate, locate, penetrate, celebrate
-en: lengthen, strengthen, toughen, threaten
The suffixes –ise and –ify do not have any other meaning apart from its verb-
forming function and can derive verbs from adjectives too, as in nationalize,
tenderize, intensity, purify. However, when the roots to which they are attached
are bound (e.g., petrify, satisfy, cauterize) it is often impossible to decide
whether these roots are nouns or adjectives. The suffix –ate shows the same sort
of ambivalence. Words such as generate, rotate, locate clearly contain a root
and a suffix, but due to the fact that most of the roots to which –ate is attached
are bound, it is not clear whether they are adjectives or nouns.

82 • capítulo 4
 There are also some common verbs that are derived by replacing the final
voiceless consonant of a noun with a voiced one, perhaps with some vowel
change too (parallel to the relationship between BELIEF and BELIEVE)
bath (noun) – bathe (verb)
breath ( noun) – breathe (verb)
house /s/ ( noun) – house /z/ (verb)

Only two prefixes, which are no longer productive in English, systematically

change the part of speech of the root:
be- : betoken, befriend, bedeck (verb from noun)
en- : enlarge, ensure, encircle, encase, entrap (verb from adjective or noun)

4.9  Dealing with Words: Polysemy and

Dictionary Use

In the last decades, the teaching of vocabulary has assumed its rightful place
as fundamentally important aspect of language development. The first step
in this direction was taken due to the influence of comprehension-based
approaches to language development (CARTER and McCARTHY, 1988), and
more recently due to research on computer-based language corpora and to
the lexicogrammar approach of the lexicon presented earlier in this chapter
(section 4.2). New approaches to ESL/EFL teaching and learning argue that
the early development of an extensive vocabulary can enable learners to
“outperform their competence”, that is, if one has an extensive vocabulary
(which includes all kinds of lexical units), it is possible to obtain meaning
from written or spoken texts, even though one does not now the grammatical
structure in which the texts are encoded. This is true only to a limited extent
and mainly to the early stages of the learning process. Currently, as the teaching
and learning approaches are directed mainly toward content and interaction,
vocabulary received a contextualized, meaningful communicative treatment.

capítulo 4 • 83
 Lexical units, or vocabulary item, may be formed by more than a singles word: post
office and sister – in- law, for example, are made up of two or three words but express a
single idea. There are also multiword idioms such as call it a day, in which the meaning
of the phrase cannot be deduced from an analysis of the component words. That’s why
it is useful the convention of covering all such cases by using the term lexical items
rather than words.

It is a fact that written English typically makes use of a greater variety of

lexical units, i.e., more formal and complex language is used to convey meaning
in written texts than spoken conversational English. The main reasons are
related to the fact that the writer has more time to process language, to the
permanent nature of written language (the reader can return again and again)
which requires language to be more formal and structured, and finally, to the
lack of redundancy and repetition, commonly found is speech, which must
be replaced by precise and clear use of language. Therefore, all the formal
conventions of the written language cause it to include a great number of
lower frequency words and complex structures, which can present difficulties
to readers. In the face of this situation, learners should be taught how to
proceed when getting across words they do not know the meaning. The
meaning of a good many unknown words can be predicted from the context
simply because sometimes the overall meaning of a sentence or paragraph
is still clear. The student can make sense of the text without looking the
meaning of the unknown words up at the dictionary. The reader should only
refer to the dictionary if the word is absolutely crucial to global understanding
of the text or if the word keeps appearing in different parts of the text and
the reader can nor ignore its presence in the text and nor infer its meaning
through the context.
Concerning the inference of meaning from context, one way for learners
to make intelligent guesses when they are not able to immediately recognize
a word is to analyze it in terms of what they know about it. According to Brown
(1994) and Nation (2001), there are some useful techniques that actually are
worth it:
•  look for prefixes (un-, in-, dis-, etc) that may give clues;
•  look for suffixes (-tion, -ness, -tive, -ly, etc) that indicates the part of speech
the word belongs to;

84 • capítulo 4
 •  look for familiar roots (ascribe, for example, contains the root scrib from
Latin write and can be of help to yield the meaning “consider as belonging to”);
•  look for grammatical contexts that may signal information;
•  examine the semantic context for clues.

However, we should point out that reading is not a “guessing game” and
that whenever readers feel they have used all their skills and put forth as much
effort as possible to try to understand the meaning of a key word in the text, but
nothing seemed to work out, then it is time to look the work up at the dictionary.

4.9.1  Literal and Figurative Meaning

According to Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman (1999), the word’s denotation

is its referential meaning, usually known as the literal meaning of a word.
For example, the word cat refers to a feline quadruped. A connotation is the
emotional association with a word, and this association can be personal or
communal. For example, when I compare a man to a cat in English it may be
associated with the legend that a cat has seven lives: “That man almost died,
but he’s a cat!”. Sometimes the same word or expression has both literal and
figurative meaning, and only the context in which the lexical item is included
can help the reader identify the nature of its sematic feature:

Literal Figurative (metaphoric)

Put it into the basket. Put it into words.
The lipstick is in the bag. The election is in the bag! (is a reality)
It means that the great majority of words and most expressions are
polyssemic, that is, the same string of sounds and letters can have more than
one meaning registered in dictionaries. This polysemy is only resolved when
the word is included in a context. Only understanding the meaning in context
can the reader identify which meaning of the lexical item, in that particular
instance, is being used. Therefore, the meaning of a word can only be defined
by its relationship to other words from the context. And distinguishing between
literal and figurative meanings requires the application of sophisticated top-
down processing skills. The fact that not all language can be interpreted
appropriately by attending to its literal, syntactic surface makes special
demands on readers.

capítulo 4 • 85
 ACTIVITIES
01. The following sentences contain the nonsense word gooby. Is gooby used as a noun, a
verb, an adjective or an adverb?
a) The poor people lived crowded together in goobies in the old part of the city.
b) My grandmother’s very old and gooby now so she can’t get out much.
c) They can’t afford to buy meat and fish. They live very goobly on rice and beans.
d) She gave me my grandfather’s gold watch. I’ll gooby it forever.

Can you guess what gooby means in each of the sentence above?
Which real English word listed below can substitute the word gooby in each of the
sentences above?
- frugally - cherish -frail - slums

02. Complete the word ACT in the sentences using the suffixes from the box.

-ION -IVITIES -ING -RESS -IVE

a) This is not a time to do nothing. It is a time for act_____.

b) We have done a lot of act_____ in class this term!
c) She is a wonderful act_____. I’m a big fan of hers!!
d) Peter is studying act_____ in New York.
e) Although he was seventy, he was still robust and act____.

03. Think of words that can be formed from roots below by using the suffixes and/or prefixes
given in the box:

PREFIX ROOT (BASE WORDS) SUFFIX

dis- agree -ness
arrange
in- conscious -ful
decorate -ment
im- happy
help -ion
un- kind
polite -less
mis- success -able
understand
re- use -ive

86 • capítulo 4
04. Complete the sentences with a word from Exercise 3.
a) There is only one in this life, to love and be loved. (George Sand)
b) Hellen and Hanna are twins but don’t get along well: they about everything.
c) We decided to the living room, which caused a of our plans.
d) “Please, don’t me, Carol! I was just trying to be 
when I offered you some advice.
e)  is a state which occurs when the ability to maintain an 
  is lost.

05. Read the text and answer the following comprehension questions.

Exploding the myth of cultural stereotypes

19:00 06 October 2005 by Zeeya Merali
Americans are pushy and the English are reserved, right? Wrong, says a new study,
which reveals there is no truth in this sort of national stereotyping.
An international group led by Antonio Terracciano and Robert McCrae at the US National
Institutes of Health (NIH) surveyed more than 40,000 adults from 49 cultures. Participants
were questioned about how neurotic, extraverted, open, agreeable, and conscientious
typical members of their own culture are. This data was then compared with participants’
assessments of their own personalities and those of other specific people they had observed.
The researchers found that there was no correlation between perceived cultural
characteristics and the actual traits rated for real people.
In contrast, previous studies that have shown that some gender stereotypes, such as the
idea that women are warmer and men are more assertive, do reflect real trends.
In many cases, cultures had overly harsh views of themselves. “The Swiss believe that
they are closed-off to new experiences,” says Antonio Terracciano. “But in fact they are the
most open culture to new ideas in art and music.”
Czech mates4
Brits rank themselves as introverted, while Argentineans proclaim to be uniformly
disagreeable, neither of which is held up by the data. Czechs think they are antagonistic, but
they actually score higher in modesty and altruism than other people.
Richard Robins, a psychologist at the University of California at Davis, US, says that
the study pulls the plug on claims that perceived differences in national character reflect
4  The author uses the expression Czech mates – a reference to checkmate – to introduce the findings of the
study, whose aim is to put an end to cultural stereotype myths. The Chechs, for example, are not antagonistic, hostile,
unfriendly people as they evaluate themselves in the study.

capítulo 4 • 87
genetic differences between ethnic groups. “Stereotypes about national character seem to
be largely cultural constructions, transmitted through the media, education, history, hearsay,
and jokes,” he explains.
Terracciano hopes that the results will make people address their own misconceptions.
“People should trust less in their own beliefs about national character,” he says. “These can
be dangerous and the basis for discrimination.”
(source: <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8111-exploding-the-myth-of-cultural-stereotypes.
html#.VTPYuiFViko>)

Which are the affixes used in the bold face words from the text? What is the part of
speech they denote? What are their meanings?

pushy

national 

neurotic 

extroverted 

agreeable 

conscientious 

warmer 

assertive 

assessments 

researchers 

uniformly

antagonistic 

modesty 

psychologist 

constructions 

misconceptions 

dangerous 

discrimination 

88 • capítulo 4
 REFLECTION
In this chapter we have learned about inflectional affixes, referred to as suffixes required by
grammar which change the form of the word without changing its basic part of speech; as
well as derivational affixes, which combine with the root (or base) forms to derive new words.
We have also learned about the lexicogrammar perspective of the language (HALLIDAY,
1994) in which grammar and lexicon are considered as opposite poles of one continuum. To
wrap up the unit, we talked a little bit about polysemy and dictionary use.

FURTHER READING
CARTER, R. McCARTHY, M. Vocabulary and Language Teaching. London: Longman, 1988.
GAIRNS, R.; REDMAN, S. Working with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
HINDMARSH, R. Cambridge English lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
NATION, ?. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,
2001

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROWN, H. D. Teaching by Principles: an interactive approach to language learning. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Regents, 1994.
CANALE, M.; SWAIN, M. Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language
Teaching and Testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47, 1980.
NUNAN, D. Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1998.
SCARCELLA, R. C.; OXFORD, R. L. The Tapestry of Language Learning: the individual in the
communicative classroom. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1992.

capítulo 4 • 89
90 • capítulo 4
 5
Organizing and
Composing Written
Texts
In this last chapter of the book, we are going to have a brief introduction on the
writing skill. In terms of skills, creating and producing a coherent, cohesive and
fluent piece of writing is probably the most difficult enterprise EFL learners
can be engaged in. It is something most native speakers never master. It is even
more challenging for foreign language learners. Therefore, the best we can do
is to read a lot and learn some strategies and techniques to develop our reading
and writing competences and improve our language skills.

OBJECTIVES
•  Learn about formal and informal writing: Letters and E-mails;
•  Understand the differences among phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and essays;
•  Learn how to avoid run-on sentences and comma splices;
•  How to organize ideas before writing;
•  How to compose a written text.

92 • capítulo 5
5.1  The Written Language and Genres
The written language emerged from spoken language and it evolved in societies
as a result of cultural changes that created new communicative needs, which
could not be readily met by the spoken language. As a consequence of the
emergence of cultures based on agriculture rather than gathering and hunting,
communities of people needed permanent records that could be referred to
over and over again. All this cultural and society changes led to the emergence
of a new form of language: writing. According to Halliday (1985), the written
language is used for:

•  action (e.g., public signs, product labels, bills, menus, telephone

directories, electronic device manuals);
•  information (e.g.; newspapers, magazines, advertisements, pamphlets)
•  entertainment (e.g., comic strips, fiction books, poetry, novels, dramas,
film subtitles).

These different purposes for language will be reflected in the characteristics

of the texts themselves: letters have different characteristics from newspapers
editorials and even e-mails, which in turn are completely different from poems
and recipes and so on. When we take into consideration the concept of genre,
these differences can be observed within the sentence at the level of grammar,
and beyond the sentence at the level of text structure.
However, with the rise of social network applications, such as WhatsApp
and facebook in our contemporary society, if we analyze the language used to
communicate through these tools, we notice that there is a fine line between
spoken and written language. The feeling is that for the purpose of social
networking the concept of “talk written down” is more than enough. Where all
this ephemeral written language is going to lead us is still a question.
According to the functional view of language, which is developed to account
for relationships between the forms of the language and the various uses we
make of it, there is a systematic relationship between language structure and
its function, as described by Halliday:

capítulo 5 • 93
 Every text - that is, everything that is said or written – unfolds in some context of use;
furthermore, it is the uses of language that, over tens of thousands of generations, have
shaped the system. Language has evolved to satisfy human needs – it is not arbitrary.
A functional grammar is essentially a ‘natural’ grammar, in the sense that everything in
it can be explained, ultimately, by reference to how language is used.
(HALLIDAY, 1985, p.xiii)

Whenever people who belong to the same cultural and linguistic community
talk or write to each other, communication flows easily since they know the
rules and conventions governing their language and shared culture: our shared
schemata guide us to communicate with each other successfully. Therefore,
whenever we want to communicate with people from another culture, we must
learn the sociocultural rules and follow them to be able to negotiate meaning
and get our message across.
According to Harmer (2001), the purpose of our communication and
what we want to achieve through it determine the genre we are going to use,
and the genre determines the style and the language we are going to use to
get our message across. Therefore, the register we are going to use in the
communication process is also a consequence of the purpose and the genre
involved. The writer will operate at a different level of formality depending on
the intimacy or distance between him/her and the audience/ interlocutor. “The
more tentative the writer feels about his/her message, the greater will be the use
of formal grammar and lexis.” (p.248)

5.1.1  Formal and Informal Writing: Letters and E-mails

As technology advances, written communication continues to take various

forms. In its smallest form, a text message or tweet can be a source of writing.
Sometimes an email is appropriate enough to send information; sometimes
a written letter is preferable. While it’s not necessary to compose a letter in
calligraphy, it is essential to consider what is the most fitting style and method
for the occasion. No one can deny that there are times when nothing, not
even the fast and modern e-mail, can substitute a long newsy letter. Whether
handwritten, printed, or typed, the standard letter format hasn’t changed.

94 • capítulo 5
 •  Your home address and date: if your stationary does not include your
printed address, place it in the upper left-hand corner of the first page. Include
the date one or two lines below your home address.
•  Body of the letter: personal letters usually share news and information,
mix good and bad news, answer questions and ask about the recipient. It is
more likely that a mailed letter will stay private; e-mailed letters can easily be
forwarded by mistake.
•  Ending a letter: the preferred ending to formal social or business letters
is “Sincerely”, “Sincerely yours”, “Very sincerely”, or “Very sincerely yours”. The
complimentary close “Kind(est) regards”, and “Warm(est) regards” fill a nice
gap between formal and more intimate closings. In friendly letters, the most
frequently used closings are “Cordially”, “Affectionately”, “Fondly”, and “Love”.
“Gratefully” is used only when a benefit has been received, as when a friend
has done a favor for you. “As always” or “As ever” is useful in closing a letter to
someone with whom you may not be close or haven’t seen for some time.
•  Signatures: sign your first name and last name if you’re writing to someone
you’ve never met face to face. Enclose you last name between parentheses
if you’ve only spoken with the person on the phone. Use you first name or
nickname on letters to friends or business associates who know you.

Electronic communication is constantly changing. E-mail is great for

fast and effective communication, but basic rules for communication and
education should still be kept in mind. While e-mail is certainly a more informal
form of communication, here are some tips for effective and courteous e-mail
communication.

•  Personal e-mails: according to Hammer (2001), personal e-mails are

usually written in a special speaking-like informal style and there is no
obligation for grammatical correctness or even correct spelling.
•  Your subject line is your first impression: be sure to include an informative
subject line. Never send an e-mail with “no subject” in the subject line.
•  Business e-mails: grammar and word choice matter. While spellcheck is
a great tool, always read your e-mails over once or twice for grammar, spelling
and word choice. E-mail is not an excuse for misspellings, grammatical errors,
or punctual mistakes.

capítulo 5 • 95
 •  Be aware of your voice: be aware of usage of all caps, emoticons, and text
message abbreviation. Using all capital letters tends to convey to the reader that
you are shouting at them and tends to be harder to read. Also be aware that in
the absence of facial expressions or tone of voice, interpretation defaults to the
negative.
•  Closing an e-mail: while there is no doubt that e-mail is more informal
than a typed letter, greetings and closings are still important. When composing
e-mail to senior management always use a more formal greeting. When in
doubt, defer to the formal. For example, use Mr. or Ms., hello versus hi, or
Elizabeth versus Liz. When communicating with senior management, you
should also end the e-mail with a formal sign-off as well.

Since e-mails are a relatively new genre, miscommunication can easily occur
when people have different expectations about the e-mails that they send and
receive. E-mails can be used for many different purposes specifically:

•  when it is not easy to get in touch with the person and you need to reach
this person
•  you need to send someone an electronic file
•  you need to send or forward the same information to a large number of
people quickly (for example, a memo that needs to be sent to the entire office
staff).

CONNECTION
Email Cover Letter Example
<http://jobsearch.about.com/od/jobsearchemailsamples/ig/Email-Message-Examples/
Cover-Letter-Email-Example.htm>
Email Message Examples <http://jobsearch.about.com/od/jobsearchemailsamples/a/
emailmessageexamples.htm>
Business Letters Examples
<http://jobsearch.about.com/od/business-letter-examples/a/business-letters.htm>

96 • capítulo 5
 ACTIVITY
01. Read lines 1-10 from some letters and e-mails. Which are formal and which are informal?
Which are beginnings? Which are endings?

01. Great to hear from you again.

02. I am writing in response to your advertisement in today’s newspaper for an IT

consultant.

03. Give my regards to Robert and all the family.

04. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch for so long, but you know how it is.

05. Thank you for your invoice of April 16th. Please find enclosed check for the full
amount.

06. Write, or better still, e-mail me soon.

07. We trust this arrangement meets with your satisfaction.

08. Just a note to say thank you so much for having me to stay last weekend.

09. Take care. I can’t wait to see you next week.

10. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

5.2  What’s a sentence?

In English, a sentence must have at least one independent, or main clause.
A main clause must have a subject and a verb – the verb must agree with the
subject and also must show time (present, past or future).There is only one kind
of sentence that does not have subject explicitly stated - an imperative sentence-
since the subject ‘you’ is implicit and can easily be understood and retrieved

capítulo 5 • 97
from the context. A main clause does not depend on another clause to be fully
understood. Another kind of clause is the dependent clause. The dependent
clause must have a subject and a verb, but they need another clause to be fully
understood, that’s why they receive the label ‘dependent’. In the following
sentences the subjects are underlined once and the verbs are underlined twice.

•  Mr. and Mrs. Stevens are doctors.

•  They live in Toronto, Canada.
•  All their patients will have finished today’s chemotherapy sessions by five.
•  Most of them will finish the chemo treatment this month.
•  Mrs. Stevens has received many awards for her cancer researches.
•  The prizes were given for her chemo seminars in Europe.
•  Look at them!
•  Aren’t they perfect together?

Clause is defined as a group of words containing a subject AND a verb. A phrase, on

the other hand, is a group of words that does NOT contain a subject and a verb. Clauses
can be dependent or independent. A dependent clause (or subordinate clause) is not
a complete sentence; whereas an independent clause (or main clause) is a complete
sentence. It contains the main subject and verb of a sentence.

The following phrases are not sentences:

•  Mr. Stevens giving a lecture right now. (no auxiliary verb)

•  Were making an important call. (no subject)
•  Such an interesting subject. (no verb)
•  Because Mr. Stevens is on vacation. (dependent clause)
•  Which is a renowned hospital. (dependent clause)

In order to be considered a sentence, the group of words must necessarily

contain subject and verb and at least one independent, or main clause. If a
group of words does not have an independent clause, it is a fragment, not a
sentence.
For correctness in writing, we normally avoid sentences fragments. To
correct a fragment, we often attach it to an independent clause. Look the
independent clause and fragment that follow.

98 • capítulo 5
 •  We need to do something to stop corruption in Brazil (sentence –
independent clause)
•  Because the economy is in deep recession. (fragment – dependent clause)
•  We need to do something to stop corruption in Brazil because the economy
is in deep recession. (complex sentence)

ACTIVITY
02. Read the following paragraph. Correct the fragments by joining them to the independent
clauses to which they are logically related. Where necessary, add commas and change
capitalization, but do not add words.

Catherine and Edward are married and have three daughters. Their life has improved
immeasurably. Since they both got new jobs. Catherine got a position as a translator
and interpreter at a publishing company. That is pioneering new workplace methods.
Edward was hired as a full-time consultant for an engineering firm. The difference be-
tween their new jobs and their old ones can be summarized in one word: flextime. Until
they secured these new positions. Catherine and Edward had very difficult time raising
their three daughters. Their life was extremely stressful. Because they were at the mer-
cy of a nine-to-five schedule and had to pay a lot for day care. In order to get to work
on time. They had to have the children at the day care center by 7:30 every morning.
Both of their new companies, however, offer a flextime schedule. As long as Catherine
and Edward put in their forty hours a week. They are free to work. When it is convenient
for them. Now they can take turns staying home with the children and day care is just
a memory. Best of all, the children are much happier. Because they are getting the
attention they needed.

5.2.1  Avoiding Run-on Sentences and Comma Splices

As we have already seen, a sentence is made up of at least one independent

clause. A sentence containing more than one independent clause must be
punctuated properly to avoid two kinds of errors: the run-on sentence and the
comma splice.

capítulo 5 • 99
 A run-on sentence is a group of words containing at least two independent
clauses without any punctuation separating them; the sentences are “run
together.”
Independent Clause Independent Clause

Adam and Rachel were on their way to the yard sale an old man waved briskly to them.

There are four different ways to correct a run-on sentence:

a. Separate the two independent clauses with a period. Capitalize the first
word of the second clause. So, don’t forget: a period and not a comma is used to
separate two independent clauses.
.
•  Adam and Rachel were on their way to the yard sale An old man waved
briskly to them.

b. Separate the two independent clauses with a semicolon. Do not capitalize

the first word of the second clause.
•  Adam and Rachel were on their way to the yard sale; an old man waved
briskly to them.

c. Join the two independent clauses with a comma and a coordinating

conjunction.
•  Adam and Rachel were on their way to the yard sale, and an old man waved
briskly to them

d. Make one of the independent clauses dependent by adding a

subordinating conjunction, and separate the two clauses with a comma if the
dependent clause comes first.
•  When Adam and Rachel were on their way to the yard sale an old man ,
waved briskly to them.

However, when the subordinate clause follows the main clause, usually
no comma is used. As we have already seen (chapter 3) the subject pronoun is
preceded by its referent, so the names Adam and Rachel precede the pronoun they.

• An old man waved briskly to Adam and Rachel when they were on their way to the yard sale.

100 • capítulo 5
 A comma splice is the joining of two independent sentences with only a
comma. A comma, however, does not provide adequate separation.
Independent Clause Independent Clause

Patrick and Rachel hiked for three days, they were very tired.

A comma splice can be corrected by the same four methods used to correct
a run-on sentence: using a period; a semicolon; a comma and a coordinating
conjunction; and making one of the clauses dependent by adding a
subordinating conjunction. However, there is a fifth way of correcting a comma
splice:

e. Converting one of the clauses into an adverbial –ing phrase if the subjects
of the two clauses are the same.
•  Having hiked for three days, Patrick and Rachel were very tired.

In this specific example, as the subject of the independent clauses is the

same, we can reduce the clause into a phrase, i.e., we omit the subject (so it is
not going to be a clause anymore because the concept of clause is “a group of
words containing subject and verb”) and change the verb to the –ing. In order to
keep the meaning of a past action (Patrick and Rachel hiked for three days), we
add the verb have before hiked and change it to the –ing.
Punctuation Rules:
The period and semicolon are similar punctuation marks in that they are
both used between independent clauses. The period can be thought of as
separating two clauses and the semicolon as joining two clauses.
Do not capitalize the first word after a semicolon (unless it is I or a proper
noun)

•  The professors considered the Board of Education’s offer ; then they went
on strike.

Use a semicolon instead of a period to join independent clauses if you feel

that the two clauses have a close connection in meaning.

capítulo 5 • 101

 ;
•  Emily’s job situation deteriorated a great deal she had to speak to her
coordinator.

Be careful! Do not use a semicolon to connect an independent clause and a

dependent clause.
,
•  While I was sitting in class I fell asleep.
NOT
;
•  While I was sitting in class I fell asleep.

ACTIVITY
03. Correct the following run-on and comma splices by using the suggested method in each
case:
a) The old man had forgotten to buy medicine. He went into diabetic shock. (period)
b) Susan knew she had to change her relationship with her boss she didn’t know how to do
it. (coordinating conjunction and comma)
c) Hillary wished she had gotten to the party on time she was glad she had stopped to help
the old lady. (subordinating conjunction at the beginning of sentence and comma)
d) The old man looked ill he needed to get out of the sun quickly. (semicolon)
e) Hanna wanted to go to the meeting there was an issue she wanted to discuss. (semicolon)
f) Nancy felt dominated by her mother-in-law she needed to take assertive action. (convert
the first clause to an adverbial –ing phrase and place the noun subject in the second
clause)
g) Harold says he will seek professional help to overcome his anger there is no assurance
he will carry out his promise. (subordinating conjunction at beginning of sentence,
dependent clause and comma)

5.3  What’s a paragraph?

Paragraphs are the building blocks of any written text, such as essays, articles,
papers. The most widespread definition of paragraphs among teacher and
students is in terms of length: a paragraph is a group of at least five sentences;
a paragraph is half a page long, etc. However, the features which actually
define a paragraph is its unity and the coherence of ideas among sentences. A

102 • capítulo 5
paragraph is defined as “a group of sentences or a single sentence that forms
a unit” (Lunsford & Connors, 2003, p.116). Layout and length are not enough
characteristics to determine whether a section in a paper can be labeled a
paragraph or not. For instance, in some styles of writing, particularly journalistic
styles, a paragraph can be just one sentence long. Ultimately, a paragraph is a
sentence or group of sentences that support one main idea.

5.4  What’s an Essay?

Essays are non-fictional pieces of writing which usually present an author’s
personal point of view. While essays tend to be subjective and expository, they
can also include narrative. Almost all modern essays are written in prose and
tell about learned arguments, observations of daily life, reflection of the author,
recollections and so on.

5.5  Organizing your ideas

The first step to compose any kind of text is to decide which ideas are going to be
turned into arguments in the texture of your sentences and which central idea is
going to be included in the thesis statement. Decide: what is the main idea you
want to convey to your reader? The thesis statement must include information
that is going to be presented throughout the text, thus each paragraph of the
essay must be somehow related to that idea. In other words, your paragraphs
should remind your reader that there is a recurrent relationship between your
thesis statement and the information included in each paragraph.
Once you have decided on the topic and created a working thesis statement,
mind your audience and your purpose. Now it is time to begin deciding which
ideas, information and even arguments will actually go into the essay. At this
point you should spend a few minutes brainstorming about your thesis and
writing down any and all ideas that may relate.  There is no need to edit these
ideas as they come; instead, simply write them all down and you can then edit
and group them when you are done. 
After having done some brainstorming to activate your schemata on the
topic in order to have more ideas to develop your thesis, you should keep in

capítulo 5 • 103
mind as you begin to write down your sentences and paragraphs that every
paragraph in an essay should present:

•  unity: all the sentences in a single paragraph should be related to the main

idea, which is often expressed in the topic sentence of the paragraph;
•  relationship with the thesis: the sentences should all show relationship
with the main idea, i.e., thesis statement, of the text or essay (ROSEN &
BEHRENS, 2000).
•  coherence:  the sentences should be arranged in a logical manner and
should follow a definite plan for development (ROSEN & BEHRENS, 2000).
•  connection among idea: Every idea discussed in the paragraph should be
adequately explained and supported through evidence and details that work
together to explain the paragraph’s main idea (ROSEN & BEHRENS, 2000).

The writer or author can use different rhetoric techniques to organize a

paragraph. The organization you choose will depend on the thesis statement
of the paragraph. The following rhetoric strategies are a few possibilities for
organizing your piece of writing:

•  Narration: tell a story using chronological order from the beginning to the

end.
•  Description: provide specific details about what something looks, smells,
tastes, sounds, or feels like. Organize spatially or by topic.
•  Process:  explain how something works, step by step. Following a
sequence—first, second, third – helps the reader to clearly understand the
development of the process.
•  Classification: separate into groups or explain the various parts of a topic.
•  Illustration: provide examples and explain how those examples clarify or
illustrate your point.

5.5.1  Composing your Written Text

Introductory Paragraph and Thesis Statements

An essay is composed of an introduction, a body (development) and
conclusion. In the introductory paragraph the author writes a statement to
attract the reader’s attention. This statement is the first of the paragraph’s

104 • capítulo 5
general statements, which introduce the general topic of the essay. There
are many ways the writer can spark the reader’s interest: with a question, a
humorous remark, a shocking statement.
The flow of ideas in the paragraph goes from the general (broad ideas) to the
specific (details, examples, particular cases). The most specific statement is the
thesis statement, which is usually the last sentence of the paragraph.
Examine the following paragraph:

Topic sentence

People who are unwilling to risk failure are not capable of achieving big
successes.  The careers of the inventor Thomas Edison and the comedian
Charlie Chaplin serve as good examples.  Without Thomas Edison, we might
still be reading in the dark today.  But did you know that Edison discovered the
lightbulb after a thousand different attempts?  When asked what he had learned
from those one thousand mistakes, Edison responded that he had found one
thousand ways in which a lightbulb could not be made.  During his early days in
London, people threw things at Charlie Chaplin to make him get off the stage. 
Would we be enjoying the starring film roles of this famous comedian today
if he had taken those audiences’ reactions to heart and stopped pursuing his
dream to become an actor?  Learning to cope with failure makes you strong
enough to view every defeat as another step toward success.
thesis statement

(source:<http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/IEP/writ/exercise-
paragr_struct_coher.htm>)

As we can notice in the paragraph, the first sentence introduces the general
topic that the author is going to develop during the paragraph and tries to attract
the reader’s attention- it’s the topic sentence. Who has never experienced
failure? The next six sentences are support and clarify the main idea expressed
in the topic sentence. To illustrate the idea, the writer provides clear and
concise examples which support the topic sentence. The last sentence, the
thesis statement, refers back to the topic sentence and makes clear the author’s
opinion about the relationship between failure and success.
The thesis statement communicates the main idea of the essay. It reflects

capítulo 5 • 105
the writer’s narrow focus and point of view, attitude, opinion, and it also
forecasts which aspects of the subject the writer will discuss to support the
thesis in the body of the essay. A good thesis statement should have all of the
criteria mentioned above.
An essential ingredient of effective writing is illustration, which is used to
clarify or support the main idea that has been expressed in the topic sentence of
a paragraph. To illustrate an idea, a writer provides clear and concise examples,
persuasive explanations, appropriate statistics, and relevant anecdotes (brief
stories) that support the topic sentence.

Is it possible to go through failure to grow through it?

In the model paragraph, the author provides statistics and anecdotes about the lives
of Thomas Alva Edson and Charlie Chaplin to show how both these well-known and
famous people would not have become successful if they had not risked failure. The
one thousand failed attempts Edison went through before discovering the lightbulb
and Chaplin’s experiences of having things thrown at him when he started in the show
business are vivid images that not only convince the reader of the accuracy of the topic
sentence previously presented, but also prepare the reader for the thesis statement, the
concluding sentence, which reinforces the main idea of the paragraph.

CONNECTION
Academic Essay
<http://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/essay-structure>

5.5.2  Argumentative or Persuasive Paragraph and Essay

The aim of an argumentative essay or paragraph is to convince or persuade

the reader to agree with the author’s point of view or opinion. An argumentative
or persuasive piece of writing tries to be very convincing by appealing to
reason and logic. This type of rhetoric strategy must introduce and explain the
background to the issue or problem that is under analysis. However, the author

106 • capítulo 5
must take a stand in the thesis statement and present his or her point of view
strongly and clearly. In addition, a persuasive essay usually suggests a course of
action for the future, such as “because of all the presented arguments, we must
stop banning books.”
In most good persuasive essays, the writer’s point of view is clearly stated in
the first paragraph. Nevertheless, an essay is not a mere opinion. The body of the
essay should provide support or reasons for the author’s point of view: factual
details, explanations, examples, and even, in appropriate cases, anecdotes from
personal experience. Writing and argumentative essay is like taking one side in
a debate, either for or against what is under discussion. The writer must not
only show or even prove that his or her ideas are correct, but also show or even
prove, if possible, that the opponent’s arguments are incorrect or, at least, not
entirely correct. Refuting an opponent’s views and arguments involves showing
the flawlessness of the opponent’s arguments leading the audience to conclude
that the opponent’s arguments are not correct or that at least it is somewhat
incongruent. In order to be effective, an argumentative essay must contain a
point-by-point refutation of the main arguments of the opposing view or stand.
If an opponent has a valid point or expresses an idea that is true, the writer
must, in honesty, concede it. It is very rare that the arguments on one side are
all bad and on the other side all good. After admitting that the opposition may
have a good point, the writer can go on to show that overall, his or her reasons
are superior to the opponents’s views. Every argumentative or persuasive essay
should have at least one concession to show some understanding of the ideas
of the opposite side. The concession should not appear in the conclusion,
and it cannot be allowed to change the main idea or divert attention from the
thesis statement of the essay. The conclusion should follow logically from the
arguments in the essay. It summarizes the main ideas and reaffirms the thesis.
It may also offer suggestions.

CONNECTION
Persuasive Essay Samples
<https://academichelp.net/samples/academics/essays/persuasive/page/2/>
How to Write an Argument Essay
< http://homeworktips.about.com/od/essaywriting/a/argument.htm>

capítulo 5 • 107
5.6  Major Writing Error Categories
According to Ferris (2002), there are some common errors to which EFL/ESL
students are prone in writing. In this section, we are going to help students
recognize types of errors which are global, frequent and stigmatizing. Research
indicates that focusing on patterns, i.e., general types of mistakes, rather than
on individual errors, is more effective for both students and teachers.

Type 1: Nouns

•  Noun endings
I need to buy some book.
I gained a lot of knowledges in high school.

•  Articles
I need to buy → book.
A good jobs is hard to find.

Type 2: Verbs

•  Subject-verb agreement
The boys was hungry.
That TV show come on at 8:00.
Many students in the class is failing.

•  Verb tense
Last year I come to Sac State.
I’ve never been to Disney World, but I had been to Disneyland before.

•  Verb form
My car was stole.
My mother is miss her children.

108 • capítulo 5
 Type 3: Punctuation and Sentence Structure

•  Sentence fragments
Wrong: After I got home. I washed the dishes.
Right: After I got home, I washed the dishes.

•  Comma errors
When I got home → I discovered my house was on fire.
I studied hard for the test → but I still got a bad grade.
I studied hard for the test, I still got a bad grade.

•  Run-on sentences
I studied hard for the test I still got a bad grade.

•  Semicolon errors
Although I studied hard for the test; I still got a bad grade.
I studied hard for the test → I still got a bad grade.

Type 4: Word Form Errors

Examples:
My father is very generosity.
Intelligent is importance for academic success.

Type 5: Preposition Errors

Examples:
I do a lot of work on volunteer organizations.
For an American, I like baseball and hot dogs.

Being aware of the most common mistakes EFL students make, the learner
will be able to apply his /her own learning strategies leading to the effective
management of learning – that’s what we call learner autonomy. It enables
students to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, which, in the case of
the latter, will make students know how to go about improving themselves and
becoming more effective writers.

capítulo 5 • 109
 CONNECTION
Introduction to the Basic Rules of Punctuation
<http://grammar.about.com/od/punctuationandmechanics/a/punctrules.htm>

5.7  Writing Evaluation General Categories

According to Brown (1994), there are six general categories which are often
taken into account when an essay or any piece of writing is evaluated:
1. Content (0 – 24)
•  Thesis statement
•  Related ideas
•  Development of ideas through personal experience, illustration, facts,
opinions
•  Use of descriptions, cause/effect, comparison/contrast
•  Consistent focus

2. Organization (0 -20)
•  Effectiveness of introduction
•  Logical sequence of ideas
•  Conclusion
•  Appropriate length

3. Discourse (0 -20)
•  Topic sentences
•  Paragraph unit
•  Discourse markers
•  Cohesion
•  Rhetorical conventions
•  Reference
•  Fluency
•  Economy
•  Variation

110 • capítulo 5
 4. Syntax (0 -12)
5. Vocabulary (0 -12)
6. Mechanics (0 -12)
•  Spelling
•  Punctuation
•  Citation of reference (if applicable)
•  Neatness and appearance

There is no consensus among evaluation experts on the system of weighting

each of the above categories, i.e., which of the six is most important, next,
and so on. However, the order in which the six are listed here at the very least
emphasizes the importance of content over syntax and vocabulary, which
traditionally might have had priority. That’s why reading and writing should be
connected. Writers and prospective writers learn to write in part by carefully
observing what is already written. That is, students can gain important insights
both about what to write (content) and how to write (vocabulary and grammar).

REFLECTION
Last but not least, in this chapter we briefly introduced the writing skill presenting a balanced
approach between writing as a process, which concentrates on the creation of the text,
and a product, which focuses on the end product. Therefore, we compared and contrasted
two genres, letters and e-mails, two kinds of written texts which can either be used for
informal or formal communication; we talked about the differences and special features of
phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and essays; we learned about two common kinds
of punctuation problems known as run-on sentences and comma splices; we talked about
organizing ideas before writing and composing a written text. To wrap up the unit, we talked
about the major writing error categories and the six general categories evaluated in any
piece of writing. We hope you have learned a lot about the reading and writing skills and have
enjoyed the course!

capítulo 5 • 111
 FURTHER READING
BATES, L.; LANE, J.; & LANGE, E. Writing clearly: Responding to ESL compositions.Boston: Heinle
& Heinle, 1993
Kroll, B. Teaching writing in the ESL context. In C. Murcia (Ed.), Teaching Englishas a second
language. New York: Newbury House, 1991.
PRABHU, N. S. There is no best method – why? TESOL Quarterly, 24, p.161–176, 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROWN, H. D. Teaching by Principles: an interactive approach to language learning. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Regents, 1994.
CANALE, M.; SWAIN, M. Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language
Teaching and Testing. Applied Linguistics 1, 1-47, 1980.
HARMER, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 3rd edition, England: Longman, 2001.
NUNAN, D. Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1999.
SCARCELLA, R. C.; OXFORD, R. L. The Tapestry of Language Learning: the individual in the
communicative classroom. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1992.

ANSWER KEY
Capítulo 2

01.
1. d
2. c
3. a
4. a
5. b
6. c
02.
1. b
2. b
3. a

112 • capítulo 5
03.
Cognate words
bargaining (barganha) – discussion (discussão/ troca de ideias) – topics (tópicos) – hours
(horas) – secretary (secretária) – decided (decidiram) – final (final) – colleague (colega de
trabalho) – proposed (proposto) – partially (parcialmente) – accept (aceitar) – legislation
(legislação) – political science (ciências políticas) – government (governo) – programs (pro-
gramas) – funds (fundos) – establish (estabelecer) – limits (limites) – vehicle (veículo) –
emissions (emissões)
False friends
attended (participar de) – union representatives (representantes sindicais) – to anticipate
(aguardar com expectativa) - actually (de fato) – comprehensive (abrangente/ampla) –com-
promisse (entrar em acordo/ fazer concessão) – recorded (registrou) – eventually (finalmen-
te) – office (escritório) – realized (percebeu) – company policy (política da empresa) – retired
(aposentado) – pretended (fingi) – appointment (compromisso) – cafeteria (refeitório) – par-
ticular (exato) – strangers (desconhecidos) – lunch (almoço) – lecture (palestra) – mayor
(prefeito) – expert (expecialista) – tax (imposto) – graduate degree (pós-graduação) – assist
(dar assistência) – senior (idoso) – college education (ensino superior) – public library (biblio-
teca pública) – assumes (presume)
04.

Capítulo 3

1- Graffiti and Street Art

People have been painting and writing on walls throughout history. In prehistoric times, pe-
ople in Africa and Europe used to paint pictures of animals and people in caves. Graffiti has
been found on buildings at ancient sites in Greece, Italy, Syria and Iraq. In the Roman town
of Pompeii, archaeologists have found numerous examples of graffiti written in Latin. These
include religious, political and romantic messages, and even some magic spells!
In the late twentieth century, graffiti and street art became an international phenomenon.
In the 1970s, young people in New York used pens to write their names or “tags” on walls
around the city. One of the first “taggers” was Demetrius, a teenager from a Greek family.
Demetrius’s tag was TAKI 183. TAKI was his nickname and 183 was the number of the street
he lived on - 183rd Street. At first, he wrote his tag on walls in his neighborhood. Then he
started tagging in subway stations on the way to and from school.
When the subway train stopped at a station, he would jump off, write his tag on the wall and
then jump back on before the doors closed. Other teenagers noticed Demetrius’s tag and
started to write their own. Soon, New York’s walls, buses and subway trains were covered with
tags: Barbara 62, Joe 182, etc.
capítulo 5 • 113
Is graffiti art or vandalism? This depends on your point of view, but in many countries,
writing or painting on public or private property is considered vandalism. Many street
artists have been stopped by the police and some have had to pay fines.
Many city councils complain about the high cost of cleaning graffiti off buildings, buses and
trains. In some countries, councils have tried to encourage artists not to paint randomly on
walls by allowing them to work in designated areas. In Taiwan, there are “graffiti zones” where
artists are free to paint and write on walls. In Sao Paulo in Brazil, the city council has even
allowed some graffiti artists to paint on the city’s subway trains.
And what does the art world think of graffiti and street art? Recently, there has been a
growing recognition of its value as an art form. There have been major exhibitions of
street art in galleries in Paris, London and Los Angeles. American artist Elura Emerald orga-
nized a street art exhibition at a New York Gallery in 2008. She defended street artists,
saying “artists who paint on the street are merely expressing themselves, not hurting
anyone. They should be appreciated and celebrated”.

Answers: 1F – 2D- 3E – 4B – 5C – 6A

01. In the following letter the linking words and phrases are missing. Choose the most
appropriate phrase from the ones given below.

Dear Harry,

Remember that I told you I was trying to get a job at ICTL?

(1) Well, I finally managed to get one! Of course, I haven't been working there long, (2) But I
can already tell that it's a wonderful place to work. All the staff, (3) even the directors, are very
friendly with everybody, and (4) what’s nice, they have marvelous facilities for the employees.
(5) For instance, there's a bar and gym, and lots of other things.
I'm called the Safety Equipment Officer. It (6) may sound like an impressive title, but it's not a
very accurate description of what I do. My main job is to provide protective clothing, (7) such
as overalls, helmets, and so on. I estimate what the different departments will need, and (8)
after I order it from the suppliers.
(9) In the way I make sure that the various departments have everything they want. (10) But,
stationery is also my responsibility.
(11) Also, I have to supply all the offices with paper, envelopes, and so on. I find the job very
interesting (12) because I get the chance to go all over the factory and to meet everybody.
(13) Besides the pay is a lot better than in my old job.

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(14) Anyway, that's my news. What about yours? Drop me a line when you have time. Re-
gards to your family, and best wishes to you.

Terry

02.
1. As I was walking down 3rd Av. I met my friend Antonio who bought me a pizza.
2. He could read and write despite being blind.
3. Although he had given up cigarettes, he still smoked a cigar at special occasions.
4. They changed all the chairs in the office so as to keep all workers happy.
5. We called the ambulance after seeing the accident was really serious.
6. Many countries in the world don't have enough food because of serious social and
political problems.
7. They lost the match as a result of their poor physical preparation.
8. Please give a ring when your mother gets home, I would like to talk to her.
9. We wrote a letter to everybody, so that they had all the necessary information.
10. There was such a mess after the party that we had to pay somebody to do the cleaning.

Capítulo 4

01. The following sentences contain the nonsense word gooby. Is gooby used as a noun, a
verb, an adjective or an adverb?

a) slums
b) frail
c) frugally
d) cherish
Can you guess what gooby means in each of the sentence above?
Which real English word listed below can substitute the word gooby in each of the sentences
above?
- frugally (adverb) - cherish (verb) -frail (adjective) - slums (noun)

02. Complete the word ACT in the sentences using the suffixes from the box.
a) This is not a time to do nothing. It is a time for action.
b) We have done a lot of activities in class this term!
c) She is a wonderful actress. I’m a big fan of hers!!
d) Peter is studying acting in New York.
e) Although he was seventy, he was still robust and active.
capítulo 5 • 115
03. Think of words that can be formed from roots below by using the suffixes and/or prefixes
given in the box:
Answers may vary (look up the words you formed at the dictionary)
Which are the affixes used in the bold face words from the text? What is the part of speech
they denote? What are their meanings?
pushy – push (verb) + y = adjective
national – nation (noun) + al = adjective
neurotic – neurosis (noun) + tic = adjective
extroverted – extrovert + ed = adjective
agreeable – agree (verb) + able = adjective
conscientious –conscience (noun) + ous = adjective
warmer – warm (adjective) + -er = adjective comparartive
assertive – assertion (noun) + -ive= adjective
assessments - assess (verb) + ment = noun
researchers – research (noun) + er = profession/ person
uniformly – uniform (adjective) + -ly = adverb
antagonistic – antagonism (noun) + -ist(ic) = adjective
modesty – modest (adjective) + -y = noun
psychologist – psychology (noun) + -ist = profession/ person
constructions – construct (verb) + -tion = noun
misconceptions – mis- (wrong) + conceive (verb) + -tion = noun
dangerous – danger (noun) + -ous = adjective
discrimination – discriminate (verb) + -tion = noun

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8111-
exploding-the-myth-of-cultural-stereotypes.html#.VTPYuiFViko

Capítulo 5

01. Read lines 1- 10 from some letters and e-mails. Which are formal and which are infor-
mal? Which are beginnings? Which are endings?
1. Great to hear from you again. (Beginning – Informal)
2. I am writing in response to your advertisement in today’s newspaper for an IT consultant.
(Beginning – Formal)
3. Give my regards to Robert and all the family. (Ending – Formal)
4. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch for so long, but you know how it is. (Beginning – Formal)

116 • capítulo 5
5. Thank you for your invoice of April 16th. Please find enclosed check for the full amount.
(Beginning – Formal)
6. Write, or better still, e-mail me soon. (Ending – Informal)
7. We trust this arrangement meets with your satisfaction. (Ending – Formal)
8. Just a note to say thank you so much for having me to stay last weekend. (Ending –
Informal)
9. Take care. I can’t wait to see you next week. (Ending – Informal)
10. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. (Ending – Formal)

02. Read the following paragraph. Correct the fragments by joining them to the independent
clauses to which they are logically related. Where necessary, add commas and change capi-
talization, but do not add words.

Catherine and Edward are married and have three daughters. Their life has improved immea-
surably since they both got new jobs. Catherine got a position as a translator and interpreter
at a publishing company that is pioneering new workplace methods. Edward was hired as a
full-time consultant for an engineering firm. The difference between their new jobs and their
old ones can be summarized in one word: flextime. Until they secured these new positions,
Catherine and Edward had very difficult time raising their three daughters. Their life was ex-
tremely stressful because they were at the mercy of a nine-to-five schedule and had to pay
a lot for day care. In order to get to work on time, they had to have the children at the day
care center by 7:30 every morning. Both of their new companies, however, offer a flextime
schedule. As long as Catherine and Edward put in their forty hours a week, they are free to
work when it is convenient for them. Now they can take turns staying home with the children
and day care is just a memory. Best of all, the children are much happier because they are
getting the attention they needed.
03. Correct the following run-on and comma splices by using the suggested method in each
case:
1. The old man had forgotten to buy medicine. He he went into diabetic shock. (period)
2. Susan knew she had to change her relationship with her boss, but she didn’t know how
to do it. (coordinating conjunction and comma)
3. Although/ Though/ Even though Hillary wished she had gotten to the party on time, she
was glad she had stopped to help the old lady. (subordinating conjunction at the beginning
of sentence and comma)
4. The old man looked ill; he needed to get out of the sun quickly. (semicolon)
5. Hanna wanted to go to the meeting; there was an issue she wanted to discuss.
(semicolon)

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6. Nancy felt Feeling dominated by her mother-in-law, she Nancy needed to take assertive
action. (convert the first clause to an adverbial –ing phrase and place the noun subject in the
second clause)
7. Harold says he will seek professional help to overcome his anger there is no assurance
he will carry out his promise. (subordinating conjunction at beginning of sentence, dependent
clause and comma)

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ANNOTATIONS

capítulo 5 • 119
 ANNOTATIONS

120 • capítulo 5