Explaining Relationships in Texts
Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in historical, scientific, or technical texts based on specific information
What a learner can do afterwards
- Explain the cause-and-effect relationship between events in a historical text
- Describe how a scientific process involves sequential steps that depend on each other
- Identify how key individuals in a text influenced events or other people
1 · Read
You already know how to connect ideas in a text. Now you will explain the relationship between them. That means telling how one event, step, or person affected another, using details straight from the text.
A text explains that Gutenberg invented a faster printing press. Because books could be made cheaper, more people learned to read. That let new ideas spread quickly across Europe. One person's invention set off a chain of effects.
Some words do the pointing for you. Because, so, as a result, and led to all announce that the writer is linking two things, and they show which one came first. When a question asks how two things relate, find one of these words and read what sits on each side of it. That is the relationship, stated by the text itself rather than guessed at.
Be careful: one thing happening before another, or at the same time, does not prove it caused the other. Look for a real link in the text, like a reason or a result, before you say two events are connected.
Find what happened first, then explain what it caused next: that is the relationship the text is showing you.
2 · Watch
Take it off screen
Where it sits
Learn first
This opens up
Where this leads
24 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.