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