Step 3 – Deconstruction

Learning objective(s) assessed: After working on this step, learners will be able to 

1. identify the purpose of a biographical profile (introduced in Step 2), 
2. identify the stages (organizational features) of a biographical profile, 
3. explain the purpose of the stages,
4. explain the purpose of the targeted lexico-grammatical features in the text (apposition, time sequence markers, reported speech), and 
5. identify the targeted lexico-grammatical features formally (how apposition, time sequence markers, and reported speech are “put together”)¹

3a GENRE

Before Class

What to do. Assign JI Handout 3a, Learner Prompt, which contains two tasks: reviewing genre purpose and discovering the text stages (through which the purpose is achieved).

JI Handout Step 3a, Learner Prompt

In class, we discussed the purpose of the biographical profile: to recount life events and to appraise them (review the definition we created as a group). This purpose is not achieved “in one move”, instead it’s developed in stages:

• A stage is a “part” in a text that has some unified purpose; for instance, the purpose to introduce a person, to present a series of achievements/struggles of that person, to provide an evaluation of a person or event, etc. 
• Sometimes a few stages do similar things. For instance, several stages may present life events: one can present events from childhood, while the next will focus on adulthood, etc.. 
• A stage can be as short as one sentence and as long as multiple paragraphs.  
• There is not one single way of dividing a text in stages, but you must be able to justify your choices with evidence from the text. 

On the Jovita Idár text

1. identify and mark all the stages you find
2. give each stage a name
3. write a very short statement of what the stage does

As an example, your instructor has identified the stage at the start of the body of the text. Continue from there.

What to do.

1. First, review with learners the definition of biographical profile you created together, emphasizing its purpose. State for learners that this purpose it’s achieved in stages, and because of this, the next step is to identify those stages.²
2. As a group, ask learners to share what strategies they used to identify and name stages and how did they find this work (was it easy/hard/confusing?, etc.). ³
3. Then, ask individual learners to share what they did. To visualize the work for the whole group, enter the information on each stage name, purpose, and evidence from the text in a Genre Table (see example below) as you progress through the text. Since different learners will have different stages and names for them, when engaged in this discussion, come to an agreement on a unified class table. It is very important that you remind learners to always refer back to the text when doing this work; for instance: “You marked life events as starting in the third paragraph, but some of your classmates marked life events as starting in the fourth. Let’s discuss the two options by looking at those two paragraphs. Which one do you think represents the text better?”

Possible Guiding questions to use in composing the Genre Table:

• You all saw that there is a first short blurb before the body of the text starts. What did you call it? What is this blurb doing? Let’s read it again…
• Let’s look at the body of the text now. What is the writer doing in the first paragraph—is this some sort of introduction? What did you call this part? What is this part doing (purpose)? 
• Now let’s look at the rest of the text. How many stages have you identified? Are these stages similar (hint: Are these all events in Idár’s life)?
• How does the writer choose to close the text? Where does this last section start?
• Now, let’s go back. We missed the title! The title is there for a purpose, right? Then, it is also a stage. What is its purpose?

Sample Genre Table for the Jovita Idár text

Stage name		Purpose and Form (through…)	Evidence from the text
Title		Informs the reader of the topic by naming the subject’s key achievements
Caption		Appraises (what is the value of this story?) through a few key descriptive words and by citing key contribution(s)	Teacher, writer, editor, activist, preserved Mexican cultureencouraged women to…
Introduction (a.k.a. Orientation)		Sets the stage introducing the person, issue and place, through a “micro story” that captures Idár’s character as a fighter for rights	1914’s attempt to shut down El Progreso
Life Events: A short bio of the person and issue are developed	Event 1	Early life, Jim Crow	…
	Event 2	Education; professional choice related to issue	…
	Event 3	Life as journalist: beliefs and actions	…
	Etc.	…	…
Reorientation/ Closing		…	…

3.b. LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL FEATURES 

What to do. For this text, you are explicitly teaching three features: apposition, time markers, and reported speech . You can see examples of each on the JI Full Text with Markups document (apposition highlighted in XX, time markers in XX, and reported speech in XX). Introduce one feature at a time. Remember that the goal is that after working on this portion of the task, learners will be able to identify

1. the feature’s purpose (what does the feature do in this text), and
2. its form (how it looks like, how It’s grammatically, lexically, and typographically “put together”).  

Use guiding questions to call learners’ attention to the selected features’ form and purpose. Always guide the learners to discover form and purpose themselves, instead of preemptively telling them. As you go, you can use a Lexico-grammatical Features table to record the information.

Sample guiding questions (organized by feature and, for each feature, by purpose and form):

1. Apposition
   1. Purpose. In a biographical profile like the one we are reading, descriptions of people and events or achievements are essential for achieving the genre’s purpose (recount and appraise). Since a biographical profile tends to be a short text, the author uses efficient and economical ways of providing information. Take a look at how this author does this by adding information between commas. This way of adding descriptive details or facts is called “apposition.”⁴ Let’s see an example. In the first paragraph, the author writes:⁵
      • Version 1 (original). 
        • “When the Texas Rangers showed up outside the office of the newspaper El Progreso in 1914 with the intent of shutting it down, Jovita Idár, a writer and editor, was waiting at the front door to block them from entering.”
      • There are two pieces of information about Jovita Idár in this sentence: 
        1. she was a writer and editor of El Progreso and
        2. she was waiting for the Texas Rangers at the door of the paper. 
      • The author could have separated the information in two sentences and written something like:
      • Version 2: 
        • “Jovita Idár was a writer and editor at El Progreso. When the Texas Rangers showed up outside the office of the newspaper in 1914 with the intent of shutting it down, she was waiting at the front door to block them from entering.”
      • What do you think the difference is between the two versions?⁶ 
      • [Possible student answers: 
        • Version 1 is more synthetic, gives more information in less space, “packs” information;
        • In version 1, Jovita is introduced during the action, in version 2, Jovita is introduced and only after that we read about what she was doing (the action); 
        • the rhythm is different (read both versions aloud).]
   2. Form. Let’s find other examples of apposition in the text. What are the different ways the author is constructing the apposition? 
      • [Possible student answers:
        • always between commas; 
        • many times the apposition starts with “a” or “one”; 
        • sometimes the apposition is preceded by “who”;
        • the apposition tends to appear after the antecedent, but it can also appear before it.]
2. Time Markers.
   1. Purpose. Tell your students that, as we discussed earlier, a short biographical profile recounts events in a life—in this case, that of the life achievements of Jovita Idár. Recounting (telling stories) entails creating a timeline. Then ask them, How is the timeline constructed in this text? Which words, expressions, etc. are used (introduce the concept of “time marker” here)? Is there a relationship between time markers and the stages we identified earlier? 
   2. Form. Then, focus on identifying the different types of time markers found in the text (single word, expressions, etc.). 

3. Reported Speech.⁷
   1. Purpose. Tell your students that biographical profiles tend to be compilations of information from different sources, and often, these sources are quoted in the text. Then ask them, Can you find places where the words of others are included in the text? What effect does it have to have the words of others included in the text?
   2. Form. Then guide learners to figure out the formal options for reported speech by asking them Can you figure out different ways in which the words can be integrated? What verbs are used to introduce the words of others? [The two ways of introducing the words of others are: Direct speech: XXX said “xxxx.”Indirect speech: XXX said that xxx. Both are introduced by verbs of “saying.”]

Lexico-grammatical Features Table – Jovita Idár

Lexico-grammatical feature	Purpose and Form	Evidence from the text
Apposition	Provides additional information (explains or expands) on a person, issue, event, etc., using commas, dashes, etc. Can be preceded or followed by the word that it modifies.	See text in light yellow highlighting
Time markers	Creates time sequences. Can be one word or expressions and can be at the start of the sentence or in other places.	See text in light blue highlighting
Introducing the words of someone else (reported speech)	Provides direct “evidence” for facts/ideas/feelings, etc.Introduced by verbs of saying/writing (depending on if the source is oral or written)	See text in light orange highlighting

Evaluative Assessment for Step 3, Deconstruction

What to do. Before moving on to students writing their own texts, it is a good idea to conduct an evaluative assessment of your learners targeting key deconstruction objectives to make sure they are ready to move on to writing texts. An ideal way to do this is to give them a new biographical profile and have them deconstruct it. If you have learners at different proficiency levels, remember to differentiate when grading.

JI Evaluative Assessment, Prompt for Learners.

Now it’s time to see what you can do without the assistance of your instructor and classmates. With this assignment you will be checking your ability to: 

1. identify the stages (organizational features) of a biographical profile, 
2. explain the purpose of the stages,
3. identify the targeted lexico-grammatical features formally (how apposition, time sequence markers, and reported speech are “put together”), and 
4. explain the purpose of the targeted lexico-grammatical features in the text (apposition, time sequence markers, reported speech) 

Instructions

1. Read Remedios Varo, Spanish Painter of Magic, Mysticism and Science: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/obituaries/remedios-varo-overlooked.html
2. Identify the stages directly on the text and complete the genre table below (add as many rows as you need).

Stage name	Purpose	Evidence from the text

3. Annotating the text by writing directly on it, mark examples of apposition, time markers, and direct and indirect speech. Then, complete the lexico-grammatical features table. For evidence, you can enter the applicable portions of the text directly on the table or highlight them on the text. 

Lexico-grammatical feature	Purpose and Form	Evidence from the text
Apposition
Time markers
Reported Speech

4. Complete the self-assessment table. For each goal and feature, circle the statement that better describes your abilities. Include any notes you want to share with the instructor.

Goals and Features	Fully confident	Partially confident	Not confident at all	Notes for the instructor
Identifying genre stages	I am able to identify genre stages	I am able to identify genre stages sometimes	I am unable to identify genre stages
Apposition	I am able to identify appositions and explain their purpose in the text	Sometimes I am able to identify  appositions and state their purpose in the text	I am unable to identify appositions or to state their purpose in the text
Time markers	I am able to identify time markers and explain their purpose in the text	Sometimes I am able to identify time markers and explain their purpose in the text	I am unable to identify time markers or to explain their purpose in the text
Reported speech	I am able to identify cases of reported speech and explain their purpose in the text	Sometimes I am able to identify cases of reported speech and explain their purpose in the text	I am unable to identify cases of reported speech or to explain their purpose in the text

What to do. Once you review the learners’ work and self-assessment rubrics, you will be able to decide if you need to go back and work some more on the features that your learners are unclear about before moving on to Step 4, or making sure you revise those features while working on Step 4.

1. This is the most time-consuming portion of the task. You will need two classes: one to work on Genre Stages (3a), and one on Lexico-grammatical Features (3b). ↩︎
2. Be flexible when working on the stages as there might be different justifiable ways of dividing the text. The important thing is for learners to justify their choices using evidence from the text. ↩︎
3. Let learners suggest the names for the stages. If a more technical name exists, you can provide it as well, as an alternative. Having learners come up with names gives them agency; having learners learn technical vocabulary makes them participants of an academic community.  ↩︎
4. Remind your learners that authors do not use features at random but for specific purposes, and that students themselves, when they write, do the same. ↩︎
5. If you are teaching a language were nouns and adjectives must agree in gender and number, teaching apposition allows you call learners’ attention to this agreement (the antecedent and the apposition must agree in gender and number). ↩︎
6. Possible answers: 
   (1) Version 1 is more synthetic, gives more information in less space, “packs” information;
   (2) In version 1, Jovita is introduced during the action, in version 2, Jovita is introduced and only after that we read about the action/what she was doing; 
   (3) the rhythm is different (read both versions aloud). ↩︎
7. The two ways of introducing the words of others are:
   Direct speech: XXX said “xxxx.”
   Indirect speech: XXX said that xxx.
   Both are introduced by verbs of “saying.” ↩︎