Section 1

TEXT COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

1. What event is in the focus of the newspaper writing?

2. Who are the organisers of the plot of kidnapping? What information about the plot organisers is already known to the police? Who was the victim? What was the purpose of the alleged plot?

3. What crimes are the organisers of the plot charged with?

4. Why didn’t Victoria Beckham share the news about the plot of kidnapping with her husband shortly after she had been informed of that?

5. How did Ms Beckham comment on her emotional state when she got to know about the plot?

6. In what way did the reporters of the News of the World facilitate uncovering of the alleged plot?

7. What details of Victoria Beckham’s kidnapping plot were revealed by the Sunday newspaper?

8. Was it the first attempt of kidnapping the famous couple or their children?

9. What are the Beckhams famous for?

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 the event that is in the focus of the publication.

2. Can the author’s position be characterised as that of a detached, unbiased observer?

2.2.

1. Can the initial physical paragraph be regarded as a lead? Is the ‘five-w-and-h-pattern rule’ observed here?

2. How is the reading matter of the newspaper writing in question arranged? Comment on the size of the paragraphs and the syntactic structure of the sentences constituting them.

3. How is the logical connection between the paragraphs achieved to lead the reader easily and quickly through the reading matter?

4. Can the headline be regarded as an instance of the “abbreviated grammar” style? Reconstruct its full grammatical version.

2.3.

1. Is the text characterised by a wide use of dashes? What functions do they perform?

2. Does the text contain much quoted material? Is it introduced directly or indirectly?

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

4. What role does the use of the Superlative Degree play in presenting the image of the Beckhams?

5. Pick out cliché d, stereotyped word-combinations typical of a current newspaper style.

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

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

ª Section 3

Assignments for Text Analysis in Terms of

Textlinguistic Categories