How Do You Locate Key Features in Texts?

While reading a passage or text, you must know about its key features. This is because they help in understanding the meaning of the text more clearly. Here are a few tips that you can use to locate key features in texts.

Understand the Title

Often, the title of the passage says it all. First, read the title and guess what it could be about in your head. After you are done reading the passage, then come back towards the title and relate it to the meaning of the passage. It would help a lot in identifying the key features of the passage.

Identify Key Words

To find the key features of any writing, it is important that you know what the passage is really about. In order to get yourself acquainted with the key features, focus on the keywords. Keywords are the nouns and verbs that are used in a single paragraph. Underline each one of them. You can start sentence by sentence. Understand what message the passage is trying to convey. Highlight every keyword that you see and then try to relate it with other keywords in the same paragraph. This would give you an idea about what the paragraph is about.

Use Pictures to Identify Key Features

It is often difficult to go through the entire passage and locate the key features. If the passage has a picture, it would be easier to guess. Pictures tell a lot about the content. Take a look at the picture and spot as many details as you can. These details could be the key features of the passage. You can even write the details down for your ease. While reading the passage, underline all the details that you saw in the picture. These are the key features.

When it comes to this topic people have strong favorites. Many people believe that understand human thoughts through the written word is the key towards reading progress. These are your nonfiction enthusiasts. I would classify these people as the “Reading is a Science” people. There are also many people that believe the written word should be appreciated for its beauty and ability to move us. These are your “Reading is an Art” people. These worksheets will help students differentiate between the two types of works.

What Are the Key Differences Between Stories and Informational Texts?

Stories and informational texts are poles apart from each other. Here are the key differences between both:

Style and Structure

The one major difference between a story and informational text is that they are both written in a very different pattern. They both have different styles and structures. They follow the style and structure related to their audience.

Stories are written in a more sensational way. They have details that are used to build up the setting and characters. Stories have a theme and that theme is introduced in a specific style and structure of writing. They are often written in an informal way. This style and structure are followed because stories tend to involve the readers and make it interesting for them.

In contrast to this, informational texts are strictly written in a formal way. Their number one aim is to educate readers about a specific topic. That is why informational text only contains facts and figures with no sensationalism.

Authenticity

Stories do not care much about authenticity and factual information. They only care to get an emotional reaction from the readers. The entire setting and characters of a story can be made up. They are often not real. However, there are certain stories that claim to be based on true events, but they also contain some unauthentic information.

On the other hand, informational texts are all about authenticity. They contain authentic facts and figures for the readers. Informational texts depend highly on research. It also provides a list of references to prove authenticity.

Purpose

The only purpose of the story is to entertain people. It is used to tell people more about certain cultures and human behaviors. Whereas, informational texts aim to provide readers with an educational view on specific topics. It is completely fact-based to give as much knowledge to the reader as possible.