Talking About Stories. Theoretical Preliminaries. The Plan for Rendering the Story. Some Helpful Questions for Further Text Analysis, страница 19

The article consists of several paragraphs. A paragraph is a group of sentences all of which help develop a central point or idea. There is usually one sentence in the paragraph which tells about all of the other sentences. It is called a topic sentence. The other sentences in the paragraph are details which support the topic sentence.

Sample exercise 1.  Find the topic sentence in paragraphs 1and 2.

Paragraph 1

The topic sentence: “we have to get home for dinner.”

Paragraph 2

The topic sentence: “Like many other families, my neighbour, her husband and children have hectic schedules and rarely find themselves at dinner time.”

The topic tells what the author is writing about. We also need to find out what the author thinks about the topic. Then we shall have the main idea. The main idea is the idea which the author wishes to express about the topics.

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 Sample exercise 2. State  the topic and the main ideas in paragraphs 3 and 4.

Paragraph 3

The topic : family dinner time.

The main idea: The traditional family is eroding… and one key  reason is the demise            of family dinner time.

Paragraph 4

The topic: family dinner time.

The main idea: Dinner in the author’s family served as a touchstone, symbolizing their importance to one another in good times and bad.

A.  Read each paragraph and decide on its topic. Then think about the idea that the author wishes to express about the topic.

Write out the main idea sentence of each paragraph. You will get about 20 sentences.

B. Get ready to present a short summary of the whole article basing on the main idea sentences.

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Text № 2.

Aim:  retell  the story with the elements of text analysis

A JAPANESE LEGEND

There is a strange belief among the Japanese people that mirrors have souls. The reason for this belief is that they say that the mirror takes to itself, something of the owner’s spirit, by constantly reflecting the person’s image. They, therefore, treat mirrors with care and reverence, believing that from being used by so many generations, the mirror will reflect the various qualities of character of people who used it. Mirrors have an honourable place in Japanese household, and are never thrown away, but passed down from one generation to another. Here is a short story which illustrates the high esteem in which some Japanese families held their fashionable articles of toilet.

There was a certain house in the town of Kyoto, which people avoided. The reason for their fear was that two of the former owners of the house had drowned themselves in the well that stood in the courtyard. Both of these tenants had apparently been very happy and there seemed no cause for them to commit suicide, yet both had become victims of some wicked spell.

The house had been lying empty for some time, as no one was willing to occupy a place with such a bad reputation, and so it was let very cheaply to Matsumura, a poor priest. He had come to the city to try to get a grantfrom the Regent for the restoration of the temple in his own country village.

Shortly after Marsumura took over the tenancy of the house, a great drought occurred in that area. Water became very scarce and many wells and reservoirs dried up. Matsumura’s well was one of the few that did not go dry and it allowed many people to come and draw water from it.

One day there was an outcry in the courtyard. A young man had been found drowned in the well. Only then did Matsumura recall all the queer stories about this strange house. Once more, the people of the neighbourhood shunned the house and went to draw their water elsewhere, leaving Matsumura alone.