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As you read, and even before you start, try to understand what sort
of text you are dealing with. This information is essential to
understanding. You almost certainly know a lot more about the
text than you give yourself credit for. The title, the format, the illustrations
if there are any, will give you important clues.
The title is your first giveaway: it will probably tell you the subject
of the text. together with the format, or layout, it may also
give away the type of text (article, recipe, letter, etc.), information
which you can use to understand the way it is organized more easily.
See how much you can figure out about the following text (which is incomplete...).
Charlotte au chocolat et au café
Pour 4 personnes.
Préparation 25 mn. Cuisson 10 mn.
Ingrédients :
25 biscuits à la cuiller, 200 g de chocolat noir
(minimum 50 % de cacao), 50 g de sucre, 5 oeufs frais, 20 cl de café
fort, sel, 10 cl de liqueur de café...
Now use the Altavista translation service to get meanings for some
of the words you didn't know. Just mark the above text, press Ctrl-C
to copy, then click on the side menu to open the Altavista translation.
Paste the text into the text box by clicking there and pressing Ctrl-V.
Choose French to English from the drop down menu, and click Translate.
Notice how you have to work on the translation proposed to get a decent
English version.
Illustrations
Almost any accompanying illustration will help you understand the text
better. Click on this one to go to the page it came from and see how
much you understand of the text:
Text Type
As we saw above, the title, the layout and even the shape of the text
can help you decide what type of text you are dealing with.
Is it a newspaper article, an editorial, a poem, a letter, a story?
Once you know this, you have a different set of expectations.
Stories are usually chronological, involve characters, descriptions,
etc. Articles often begin with a summary sentence and use synonyms
for the main subjects to avoid repetition. The layout of the text quoted
above entitled Charlotte au chocolat et au café probably
helped you decide on the text type, and this in turn helps with understanding.
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