Standard 3A Intermediate: Lesson 1

Effective critical reading requires skill and strategy. To retain the information you read, you need to engage actively with the text. If you read passively, you will quickly forget a text’s critical ideas and details. One of the best ways to engage with texts is by predicting outcomes. When you make predictions, you’re using clues from a text to forecast what will happen. Predictions help you anticipate twists and turns in a plot, or guess how a character in a story will behave or react.

Predictions allow you to forecast possible conclusions from the events or actions described in a text. All of these predictions help connect you to the text. Predicting outcomes can begin before you actually start to read the text. You’ll combine visual clues with information you already know to form informed predictions. For example, visual clues can trigger important predictions. Images associated with a text, whether they appear on the cover of a book or accompany an online article, can offer substantial clues about a text’s content, tone, and even the main idea. The title of a book or article offers a clue about what you’re about to read.

^{Read this excerpt from a classic story. Alice was beginning to get tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations. “What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” Suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes scampered close by her. That was nothing so very remarkable, nor did Alice think it strange to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late.” But when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice leaped to her feet. It flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat pocket or watch. Burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it. Fortunately, she was just in time to see the rabbit pop down a large rabbit hole under the hedge.}