Language in Use 23-24
This unit is concerned with the degree to which a written text needs to rely on the knowledge and attitudes of its intended reader if it is to convey successfully the information it contains. It focuses upon the relationship between writer and reader, and explores the reasons why readers dismiss a text as 'difficult' or 'unreadable'. It seeks to show that part of the difficulty lies with the reader, because he cannot brim, to the text what its writer expected him to.
[1] Ask each student to bring in examples of written material which he understands but which he thinks others are likely to find difficult. Organise the class in groups and ask each student to discuss with the others in his group any difficulties they may have had in reading the text he has provided. The kind of text involved will vary with the class: knitting and crochet patterns, modifications to petrol engines, or advanced cookery recipes provide one type of material; literature in a field like bird watching or fishing, or the history of sailing ships provides another: Pelican style reading in fields unfamiliar to most of the class like economics, archaeology, mountaineering or sailing provides material at a more advanced level.
[2] For this session, each student should bring into class the front page of a newspaper for that day. Organise the class in groups, each working on one newspaper; ask them to suppose that they have just arrived from a remote part of the world, able to speak the language but with no knowledge of our society or of current affairs. Each group should go through the text, underlining or marking out in red those words, allusions, and references which such a reader would not understand, and prepare a report which singles out those parts which they consider most important for understanding what is going on. After each group has presented its report, the discussion should focus on the degree to which any use of written language presupposes some background understanding in the reader.
[3] The work can be carried further by arranging the class in pairs,
so that each of the pair is familiar with a kind of text that the other member
of the pair finds difficult. In each pair, the one makes a list of the items
he does not understand, and the other then goes through the list, offering whatever
kind of explanation he considers suitable. In class discussion, consider such
points as:
(a) what is easy and what is difficult to explain?
(b) how often does the explanation of one item require the prior explanation
of another, and so on?
(c) what use has been made of analogy and how successful has this been?
(d) what makes analogy work well?
(e) what kinds of difficulty defeat all attempts at explanation?