1. Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
Text purpose

2. Comprehension means understanding.
Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
Comprehension means understanding.
The best way to understand a text is to ask yourself questions as you read it.
The answers to some questions are easy to find, while the answers to others are more difficult to work out.

3. do several things at once!
Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
Why does a writer write?
A writer’s purpose might be to:
entertain
persuade
inform
debate an issue
instruct
sympathise
warn or advise
describe
extend an invitation
do several things at once!

4. narratives recounts poems scripts
Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
Although any text can be entertaining, depending on the reader’s interests, texts that are specifically written to entertain are:
narratives
recounts
poems
scripts
They are usually funny, exciting or interesting in some way.

5. Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
This is an extract from a poem by Lewis Carroll. Its main purpose is to entertain.
“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”

6. Texts that inform, or give information, include:
Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
Texts that inform, or give information, include:
reports signs and labels websites newspaper articles handouts and flyers
In these texts you can expect to find:
precise nouns
factual adjectives
adverbials of time and place
mainly statements
sequencing of information and events
lists and tables.

7. Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
This is an extract from a report on kookaburras. Its main purpose is to inform.
Kookaburras are carnivorous. In the wild they eat lizards, snakes, insects, mice and small birds.
Which words are precise nouns?
Which words are factual adjectives?
Which phrase is an adverbial of place?

8. Comprehension Toolkit
Text purpose 1
The End