1.

Overview of Text Analysis

Text Samples:

The text I chose is Handbook of Forest Floor Animals by Marco Bravo and Kimi
Hosoume, 2007. I will be using two sections next week as a read aloud.

Discourse Features of the Text:

This text is nonfiction, and is laid out similar to a reference book, or handbook. It
contains a table of contents, and an introduction section that explains the formatting of
the book. Each section is about a different forest floor animal, and contains headings
and subheadings, which are the same for each organism- body structures, behavior,
habitat, and life cycle. Each section contains at least one diagram and with labels. To
my surprise, there are no connecting words in the entirety of the text. I believe this is
due to the use of subheadings, since those provide a built-in transition between sections.
The pronouns used are they and it, which is always in reference to the organism
described in each section. I also did not encounter any synonyms- the subjects (ie
millipedes, pill bugs, and the like) are all carefully referred to by the same name and the
same pronouns, and the subheadings in each section are all repeated using the same
words for each section in the book.
Syntax Features of the Text:
There are a variety of complex sentences presented in the book, but also a number of
simple sentences as well. For example, there are clauses with but: Pill bugs and sow
bugs may be called bugs, but they are not insects (p. 20). There are also a number of a
long noun phrases. An example of this is found on page 6: Beetles have a hard
exoskeleton, an outer layer that helps protect them. One other example on page 4 is as
follows: and logs that cover the ground in a forest.
I found examples of nominalization in this text as well: adaptation, decomposers,
behavior, and moisture.
The only examples of passive voice I could find in this text were to give a name to
something- a hard covering called an exoskeleton (p. 20). All other sentences are
constructed using the active voice.
Vocabulary Features of the Text: Below are lists of general academic vocabulary and
content-specific vocabulary that I pulled from this book.
General Academic
structures
active
produce
rounded
rich
provide
behavior
protect
pale
warn
Content-Specific
absorb
adaptation
antennae
burrow
clitellum
cocoon
decomposer
droppings

earthworm
exoskeleton
fangs
feelers
habitat
hatch
insect
isopod
moisture
molting
nutrient
organism
poison
pouch
predator
pupa
reproduce
soil
segment
shelter
survive
tentacle
venom
2. Deeper Text Analysis- Marking up long sentences
Example 1:
Their bodies have segments and a hard covering called an exoskeleton (p. 20).
Example 2:
When the young hatch, [they look like tiny, pale adults] (p.23).
Example 3:
It helps snails and slugs slide over sharp edges [without getting hurt] (p. 24).
3. Reflection
I found this analysis useful as I was able to really isolate what parts would be
challenging for students to grasp. Next week I will be using this text (of course as a read
aloud, as my first grade English Learners cannot yet read at this level- most can only
decode in Spanish). While this text is very dense in the sense that there is a lot of
information and a high number of content-specific vocabulary words, the actual sentence
complexity is not as high as I had first thought. There are many sentences on each
page, but the majority are shorter sentences that use the active voice. Therefore, a
challenge would be successfully understanding and retaining the content-specific
vocabulary words. I realize because there are so many, I will need to pre-teach and
provide some vocabulary learning activities for students as we work through the text (we
are only reading two sections).
Surprisingly, I found that the text features at the discourse level actually make the
text more comprehensible for language learners. The headings and subheadings are

very predictable, and the labels and diagrams in each subsection are a great visual aid
for the text. Also, the overall lack of passive voice also aids English Learners as the more
direct active voice construction makes the text more comprehensible and also will help
students to focus on the vocabulary.
I am unsure as to what types of activities I might use to engage students in
analyzing a text such as this. I feel that the other two methods that we read about this
week (the 3-part model and the SFL transitivity analysis) are far too complex for my 6
and 7 year olds to use as a tool. I may be able to adapt the Zwiers technique of marking
up sentences that I used for this assignment, as it seems to be more simple and also
more appropriate for the types of sentences (that is, less complex) that we would come
across in my classroom. Perhaps students could color code the actor and the main
thing that it is doing, as well as who or what it is doing it to (the object). I think the
key is to make sure the activity would help students to make meaning of the text, versus
finding and labeling pieces of grammar, just as Zwiers points out when describing his
methods for marking up sentences.