Interpretation: Analyzing What a Text Means

Mr Kurland is Genius!  What a great analogy.
Look at Leonardo da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa, and you see a woman smiling. But you are also aware of a painting. You see different color paint (well, not in this illustration!) and you see how the paint was applied to the wood. You recognize how aspects of the painting are highlighted by their placement or by the lighting.

When examining a painting, you are aware that you are examining a work created by someone. You are aware of an intention behind the work, an attempt to portray something a particular way. Since the painting does not come out and actively state a meaning, you are consciously aware of your own efforts to find meaning in the painting: Is she smiling? Self-conscious? Alluring? Aloof?
Looking at the Mona Lisa, you know that you are not looking at Mona Lisa, a person, but The Mona Lisa, a painting. You can talk not only about the meaning of the picture, but also about how it was crafted. What is the significance of the dream landscape in the background? Why, when we focus on the left side of the picture, does the woman looks somehow taller or more erect than if we focus on the right side? The more features of the painting that you recognize, the more powerful your interpretation will be. When reading texts, as when reading paintings, we increase understanding by recognizing the craftsmanship of the creation, the choices that the artist/author made to portray the topic a certain way. And yet there is still that feeling that texts are somehow different. Texts do differ from art insofar as they actually seem to come out and say something. There are assertions "in black and white" to fall back on. We can restate a text; we cannot restate a painting or action. Yet a text is simply symbols on a page. Readers bring to their reading recognition of those symbols, an understanding of what the words mean within the given social and historical context, and an understanding of the remarks within their own framework of what might make sense, or what they might imagine an author to have intended.

GO READ THE REST!  http://www.criticalreading.com/interpretation.htm








 

Inference- find meaning within the context

FANTASTIC RESOURCE!

Inference: Reading Ideas as Well as Words

Ideally, speakers mean what they say and say what they mean. Spoken communication is not that simple. Much of what we understand—whether when listening or reading—we understand indirectly, by inference. Listening involves a complex combination of hearing words, analyzing sentence structure, and attempting to find meaning within the context of the given situation.
The situation with the written word is no different. A text does not contain a meaning. Readers construct meaning by what they take the words to mean and how they process sentences to find meaning. Readers draw on their knowledge of the language and of conventions of social communication.
They also draw on other factors, such as knowledge of the author (“Would Henry say such a thing?), the occasion (“No one knew such things then!”), or the audience (“He’d never admit that publicly.”) They infer unstated meanings based on social conventions, shared knowledge, shared experience, or shared values. They make sense of remarks by recognizing implications and drawing conclusions. Readers read ideas more than words, and infer, rather than find, meaning.

Dan Kurland's www.criticalreading.com
Reading and Writing Ideas As Well As Words
http://www.criticalreading.com/inference_reading.htm#linka

ACT Reading Test FACTS from the official site 2013

The ACT Reading Test 40-items, 35-minutes

The test comprises four passages that are representative of the level and kinds of text commonly encountered in first-year college curricula; passages on topics in the social sciences, the natural sciences, prose fiction, and the humanities are included.

 

The test items require students to derive meaning from several texts by:

·         referring to what is explicitly stated

·         reasoning to determine implicit meanings.

Specifically, items ask students to use referring and reasoning skills to:

• determine main ideas
• locate and interpret significant details
• understand sequences of events
• make comparisons
• comprehend cause-effect relationships
• determine the meaning of context-dependent words, phrases, and statements
• draw generalizations
• analyze the author’s or narrator’s voice or method

Each passage is preceded by a heading that identifies what type of passage it is (e.g., “Prose Fiction”), names the author, and may include a brief note that helps in understanding the passage. Each passage is accompanied by a set of multiple-choice test items.

They do not test the rote recall of facts from outside the passage (everything you need to answer the questions is in the passage!) nor do they contain isolated vocabulary questions. (Like the SAT) (Vocabulary meanings on the ACT can be determined by using context clues.)

Three scores are reported for the Reading Test:

1.       total test score-based on all 40 items,

2.       subscore-based on the 20 items in the social sciences and natural sciences sections

3.       subscore-based on the 20 items in the prose fiction and humanities sections