Essential Principles of Reading, Communication, and Writing

Reading Fundamentals

Reading is an interactive process between reader and author. Main features: Prior knowledge.

Reading Strategies

Strategies include attention, comprehension, observation, and analysis to identify symbols and construct meaning.

Types of Reading

• Evasion: Develops imagination, desires, and illusions.
• Literary: Analyzes semantic sense, beauty, and style.
• Semantic: Analyzes everything regarding the word.
• Informative: Provides news and initial data for further study.
• Cognitive: Driven by a deep desire to know more; it is disciplined and develops scholarly knowledge.

Editorial Writing

Editorial is the action expressed through the written word regarding events or opinions. Principal features: Originality, clarity, unambiguous language, and the avoidance of unnecessary words.

Communication Essentials

Communication is the set of ways and means through which people interrelate with others and their environment.

Characteristics

• Emission and reception of messages.
• It is a social phenomenon.
• Usually produces answers through dialogue.

Channels and Types

Channels: Auditory, verbal, telephone, television.

Types of communication: Oral, written, visual, auditory, mime, and corporal.

Textual Synthesis and Analysis

Summary

A text built from another, respecting the author's original idea.

Steps to prepare a summary:

1. Select main ideas.
2. Connect main and secondary ideas using links and punctuation.
3. Compare the summary with the original text.

Note: A summary rescues the content of the central ideas using our own words.

Paraphrase

The communicative action of exposing your own critical understanding of a text. Synonyms: explanation, criticism, interpretation, exegesis, apostille.

Tools for Knowledge

• Table: A logical, orderly, and hierarchical summary of content.
• Comparative Analysis: The relationship between elements to find similarities and differences.
• Conceptual Map: A tool for the organization and representation of knowledge.

Grammar and Description

Punctuation

Item: Used in larger sentences when discussing the same subject; starts with a capital letter. Semicolon: Indicates an intermediate pause between a comma and a period; used before adversative conjunctions (e.g., "We fixed all the faults, but it did not work").

Types of Description

• Portrait: Describes both physical and moral qualities of a person or animal.
• Prosopography: Describes only physical qualities.
• Ethopoeia: Describes moral character, customs, and inclinations.
• Topography: Describes sites, places, and landscapes.
• Chronography: Describes events using dates and epochs.
• Parallel: Compares two individuals.
• Character: Describes types of a social class.