Text comprehension questions. 1. During what social event did the fire take place.

1. During what social event did the fire take place? What caused it?

2. For what purpose was the bonfire organized?

3. Were there any people injured in the fire? If so, what were they and how severe were the injuries that the victims of the fire received?

4. How did the firemen assess the scale of the fire?

5. How many fire-engines were there in attendance at the fire?

6. How quickly did the fire-brigade manage to get the fire under control?

7. What factors hampered extinguishing the fire?

8. What kind of medical help did the injured get?

9. What was the situation on the site the morning after the fire like?

10. Who are the organizers of the Bonfire Night celebration and what are they responsible for?

11. Why is it difficult to estimate the financial damage caused by the fire, according to the owner of the warehouses?

12. How severely were the materials kept at the stores damaged?

13. What is the Chief of the York fire-brigade’s reaction to the event?

14. How does the Chief of the fire-brigade comment on the advisability of the bonfire near the warehouses? What is his assessment of the degree of the risk involved?

15. What is the opinion of the fire organizer as for the possibility of the safety measures violation?

16. What versions of the fire causes are put forward by the people interviewed? In what way could the actions of the youth gangs have caused the fire? What violation of the safety rules might have had something to do with the fire starting?

ª Section 2

Analysis of Genre Peculiarities of a Newspaper Publication

2.1.

1. What kind of information is conveyed by the newspaper writing? Specify what event is in the focus of the newspaper publication.

2. Can the author’s attitude to the information conveyed be characterized as that of a detached, unbiased observer?

3. Does the reporter project himself in the publication?

2.2.

1. Can the initial physical paragraph be considered a lead? Is it characterized by a fixed word-order providing answers to the five traditional w-and-h journalistic questions?

2. Is the paragraphing of the text typical of the general arrangement of a news report reading matter? Comment on the syntactical structure of the sentences constituting the paragraphs.

3. How is the logical connection between the paragraphs achieved? Comment on the role of different adverbial connectors.

4. What lexical peculiarities is the headline characterized by? Why is the noun “blaze” preferred to its neutral equivalent “fire”?

5. Characterize the grammatical peculiarities of the headline and the subheading commenting on their “abbreviated grammar” style. Reconstruct their full grammatical versions.

6. Comment on the use of tense-forms in the headline.

2.3.

1. What is the stylistic value of the bulk of the vocabulary used in the newspaper writing in question?

2. Pick out special economic terms and account for their use in the publication.

3. Is the text characterized by the use of terms pertaining to other spheres of knowledge?

4. Is the publication illustrative of non-term political vocabulary?

5. Pick out cliché d, stereotyped word-combinations typical of a current newspaper style. Find the corresponding cliché s in the Ukrainian language. Remember that their translation must be dynamic.

6. Is the text characterized by an extensive use of abbreviations?

7. Are there any cases of neologisms?

8. Find examples of a) more expressive and more vividly descriptive lexical units; b) vocabulary units used in their figurative meaning and comment on the stylistic effect achieved.

9. Comment on the stylistic difference between the pairs: a) run into – amount to; b) damp down – extinguish.

10. What types of sentences prevail in the text? Does their structure reveal the grammatical parameters typical of a news report?

11. Is the use of dashes characteristic of the publication in question? If so, find examples of such and say what functions they perform.

12. What characteristic feature of news reporting is observed in introducing the participants of the events described?

13. Is the text abundant in the use of quotations? Are they introduced directly or indirectly?

14. Is the violation of a normal word-order in the phrase said Mr. Green characteristic of news reporting style?

15. Find instances of a characteristic trick of journalists to begin an adverbial phrase with Participle II and comment on their structure.

16. Make a conclusion concerning the genre of the newspaper writing under analysis.

ª Section 3

Assignments for Text Analysis in Terms of

Textlinguistic Categories