Glossary

Argument:   It has to do with the author’s intention in a paragraph, it is his reason and it is beyond what is merely and explicitly said.

Elimination:   It is a technique to get a specific argument in a paragraph. By applying this technique, you can omit unnecessary and irrelevant information to get to the essence of a text.

Substitution:  It is a technique that allows you to paraphrase and reformulate a specific argument suggested in every paragraph. This technique as well as the elimination one is also used when getting the overall argument or central theme.

Key words:  It is a technique used to concentrate on the most important information in a text, given through the form of content words or linguistic words that convey meaning. By adopting this technique, you necessarily obtain the specific argument and it also contributes to get the central theme or argument of the whole text.

Central Theme:  Once specific arguments have been obtained, you elaborate on one single statement the overall argument shown in a recurrent way and that represents the whole core of the text. There are 3 simple strategies to get it: the communicative function of the text, the discourse organizer and that recurrent argument that encapsulates the whole problem or thesis in the text.

Communicative Function:  It has to do with the author’s explicit intention in conveying his meaning. An author may expose, argue, compare, contrast, point out causes and effects and so forth arguments or reasons in the kinds of text we are dealing with in this book.

Controlling idea:  It is a sentence or a group of sentences below the title that lead you to start searching for the main idea in this type of texts. This sentence (or these sentences) is (or are) out of the text. It may consist of one, two or three sentences joined by punctuation mark. It can also take the form of questions. It is also referred to as the title of the first level. It can give light about the main communicative function of the text.

Main Idea:  It is a single one sentence inside the text that contains the core being treated in the text. It is obtained by following certain strategies. 

Main Secondary Idea: It is a single sentence that generally follows the MI and its function is to complete, support, clarify, add, confirm and so on the previous MI.

Secondary Secondary Idea:  It is a sentence inside the text that, at a deeper level, shows the author’s presence, intention or reflection about the MI of the text. It can appear before the MI, after; in the middle of a text. Its function is a kind of ‘breaking the line of thought’ or argumentation regarding a specific problem. There are some sentences that appear below a picture, at the bottom of the article as if they were different (subtitles of second and/or third level).

Linguistic Deviations (or Semantic deviations):  These are the words present in the main idea inside the text that are different from the ones announced in the controlling idea or title. These words appear as deviations or distractors to confuse you in finding the MI. Actually, they do complete its meaning. When the MI inside the text is the same controlling idea below the title, i.e. every single word is the same as it were taken identically out of the text, then, we say there are no linguistic deviations.

Synonyms:  A strategy used to search for the MI in the text taking as a point of departure the CI. You look for the similar words that express the same meaning.

Antonyms:  A strategy used to search for the MI in the text taking as a point of departure the CI. You look for completely distinct and different words that express just the right opposite meaning.

Context: Here, it refers to both linguistic and the socio-cultural situation.