1. Why? You will read a wide range of texts in many academic disciplines as preparation for college and the workplace.

2. What? A complex text is a work that contains challenging vocabulary, long, complex sentences, figurative language, multiple levels of meaning, or unfamiliar settings and situations

3. There are 3 strategies for comprehending a complex text: Strategy 1: Multidraft Reading Strategy 2: Close Read the Text Strategy 3: Ask Questions

4. Strategy 1: Mulitdraft Reading 1 st Reading: Basic Meaning Who, What, When, Where (Plot elements) Why (conflicts are they resolved?) Nonfiction text: read for main ideas Poetry: identify speaker, setting, and subject

5. Strategy 1: Mulitdraft Reading 2 nd Reading: Artistry and effectiveness of writing Text structures (organizational patterns) Authors use of figurative language Effect of authors writing style

6. Strategy 1: Mulitdraft Reading 3 rd Reading: Compare/Contrast text with others Evaluate the texts overall effectiveness Evaluate its central idea or theme

7. Strategy 2: Close Read the Text To comprehend a complex text, perform a close reading – a careful analysis of the words, phrases, and sentences within the text. As you close read, use the following tips to increase your understanding.

8. Tip 1 – Break down long sentences into parts. Look for the subject of the sentence and its ver. Then, identify which parts of the sentence modify, or give more information about, its subject.

9. Tip 2 – Reread passages. When reading complex texts, re-read difficult passages to make sure that you understand their meaning.

10. Tip 3 – Look for context clues. Such as: Restatement of an idea. Definition of sophisticated words. Examples of concepts and topics. Contrasts of ideas and topics.

11. Tip 4 – Identify pronoun antecedents. If long sentences or passages contain pronouns, reread the text to make sure you know to what or whom the pronouns refer.

12. Tip 5 – Look for conjunctions. Such as and, or, and yet, to understand relationships between ideas.

13. Tip 6 – Paraphrase. Restate in your own words, challenging passages in order to check your understanding. Remember that a paraphrase is a word-for-word rephrasing of an original text; it is not a summary.

14. Strategy 3- Ask Questions In order to become an attentive reader it is important to ask questions before we read, while we read, and after we read. There are three different types of questions that a reader should ask as they comprehend a complex text.

15. Key Ideas and Details In order to answer these types of questions it is important to pay attention to the explicit information in the text and also be able to draw inferences from the text.

16. Craft and Structure These types of questions will force the reader to analyze hoe the author developed and structured the text. The reader will also look for ways the author artfully used language and how these language choices impacted the meaning and tone of the work.

17. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas These types of questions will force the reader to look deeply at the text and construct answers to critical thinking questions. Some of these questions will include comparing texts, analyzing arguments in the text, and other methods of thinking critically about a texts ideas.

18. On your own As you read on your own it is important to ask yourself these types of questions. Most of the time in your text book and novels read in school the teacher will provide these types of questions for you, but in order to fully comprehend a text these are the types of questions one must use.