دانش خود را افزایش دهید

Learn more

The lesson video details the purpose and structure of textbooks, essays and research articles. Other common academic text types, purposes and structures include:

Case studies: These are reports about a specific case. This could be a person or group or situation that has been systematically studied. They are common in business, sociology, and law classes. The purpose of a case study is to analyze and evaluate a specific situation.

A case study begins by describing the focus of the study. Then it describes the setting of the study including people involved, location and events. Next, the author will give an account of how this changed over the period of time under investigation. Sections are often signposted with headings to help the reader navigate the text.

Reports: These are written accounts of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated. The purpose of a report is to describe an event and inform the reader about what happened.

A report usually starts by giving an overview of the project that the author is describing. It’s followed by an introduction that contains background information and reasons for doing the project. Next is a description of the project process, the findings, an evaluation of the information and a conclusion.

Key Points from the Video Lesson

After you have determined the purpose and structure of your text, you can begin reading to locate the main idea. In most types of academic texts, you can find the main idea by doing a few different things:

• Look at the title, make note of any subheadings and consider how they relate to the title.
• Read through the first paragraph or first few paragraphs.
• Make a guess about the main idea of the passage.
• Pay attention to any repeated ideas or terms as those usually will give further clues to the main idea.