4-Colour Thinking

The roles - Adopt one role: individual; linguistic; social; or textual. Follow your chosen perspective to approach any text: personalize; respond to a selection of the key questions for each role; notice and process; prepare material in spoken or written form to use in your work, present, or share.

Individual - Developing your own RESPONSES to the text

  • What are my purposes in engaging with this text: develop knowledge / find material to use (what, why?) / develop skills / develop language; develop criticality;  be assessed; be entertained?

  • How does the text-spec work for me? (date (and place) of publication, publisher)

  • What is my focused response? How interesting / useful / relevant /… are the ideas in the text to my purposes?

  • Reflect: How might the material in the text be interpreted in other contexts and cultures? What might be the effects of this text on me and others?

  • How reliable do I consider the text to be? Why?

  • To what extent do I agree with the author’s stance? Why?

  • Are the topic and argument of the text logically developed? How?

  • Is there sufficient evidence to support the argument in the text? Give examples.

  • Subjectivity: Can I find any bias or political / economic / cultural agendas?

  • Conversation: What would I say to the authors of the text?

  • What can I do with the text? Which parts (if any) could I use? How?

  • What have I learned? What will I read / listen to next? How / Where will I find these sources?

Linguistic – Noticing and processing the LANGUAGE in the text

  • How would I describe the style of the text?

      e.g. persuasive, objective, emotional, technical, legal

  • What are the key words / phrases in the text?

  • What language do the authors use to express their voice?

      e.g. evaluation, emphasis / hedging, concession, reporting

  • What are the features of cohesion? Notice: patterns, including lexical, grammatical, cohesive noun phrases, contextualizing / signposting, interactive, macro-textual features

  • What is the text information packaging: notice tendencies

      e.g. general → specific, given → new, end weight, sentence patterns, discourse markers

  • How does the academic vocabulary contribute to the meanings in the text?

      e.g. Academic Word List words

  • Phrases and collocation: e.g. complex noun phrases, interesting word patterns

  • Other academic language, evaluative language, definition, exemplification, classes of language

      e.g. reporting verbs, stance nouns, classifying adjectives, subordination

  • Topic / technical / subject-specific language: language related to the topic of the text

  • Idioms, metaphors, figurative, marked or other interesting language

Social – Noticing and processing the CONTEXT AND PEOPLE (academic / professional) behind the text

  • Context and community: What is the type of community – academic / professional / other?

  • What are the authors’ discipline, research interests, locations, schools of thought

  • Who are the author(s), their field, work, affiliations, authority, publications?

  • Where is their academic and media presence?

  • Who are their co-authors? Check out their Google Scholar page

  • What is the author’s stance? What evidence is it based on?

  • What are the thesis / main argument(s) / point(s)?

  • How can I summarize this information?

  • What are the major perspectives in the text and how do they contribute to the meaning?

  • What are the citations in the text (if any)?

  • To what extent do they provide credible and sufficient support?

  • Which sources are used and which authors are heavily cited?

  • How is the argument developed? Look for logic, bias, flaws, weaknesses, assumptions, presentation of evidence, authorial evaluation…

  • What is included, and what is excluded? Why?

  • What are the research methods and results?

Textual – Noticing and processing the CONTENT AND ORGANISATION of the text

  • What is the topic and focus? How are these developed and evidenced (through citation / support)?

  • Main points: work out and summarize the main points of the text

  • What is the ‘Text-spec’? Capture the reference for the text (author, date, place, publisher).

  • G – A – P: What are the genre, audience and purpose of the text?

    • Genre: Nesi and Gardner’s 13 academic genre families; other genres / regenres; primary / secondary?

    • Audience: named vs. profiled? how specific?

    • Purpose: inform / explain; persuade / argue; critique / evaluate; other function (e.g. propose, review, report); entertain

  • Map / Organization: How can I identify, rationalize and visually represent the text macro/micro-structure and main elements, e.g.:

    • Research report (e.g. I M R D)

    • Argument / thesis / discussion

    • Problem – solution

    • Cause – effect

    • Comparison – contrast

    • Review / critical response / proposal

    • Chronology: case study; narrative; process / trend

    • Description: data, system, concept, plan, characteristics

    • Other, e.g. regenred text such as research article → popular science article

  • Sections: break up the text to find the main sections – how do they relate and connect?

  • Features: explain any non-linguistic features of the text, such as visuals and graphics