ELLP Years1-4 - ESOL - Literacy Online - Te Kete Ipurangi

Stage 1C
The following sample text is at Stage 1C because it is fairly short and the sentences are mostly
simple or compound.
Texts at Stage 1C tend to have the following characteristics:
– about three sentences per page;
– a variety of sentence beginnings;
– ideas presented in a simple sequence;
– good support from illustrations;
– little repetition;
– use of high-frequency words and some lower-frequency, topic-specific words;
– use of simple and compound sentences.
Other examples of texts at Stage 1C include those found at the fluency levels on the colour wheel in
the Ready to Read series books and their commercially published equivalents.
Sample text
Text: Quinn, Pat and Gaynor, Bill (1995). Wind Power. Ready to Read series.
Wellington: Learning Media.
Topic: The generation of electricity through wind power, using a wind
turbine
Text type: Explanation
Audience: A reader who wants to know about wind turbines
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Topic development
The text begins with a personal
description and then moves into the
explanation. The narrator describes
the location of the wind turbine, why
it’s there, what it looks like, and how
it works. Although it is a personal
account, the text is also technically
accurate and informative. There is
a diagram on the inside back cover.
Language structures
The sentences are sometimes
simple, but these are often
expanded through adverbial
phrases of time, place, or manner
– We love to walk up the hill behind
our house. They are sometimes
complex, with at least two clauses
– It sounds like a windmill (main
clause) as the blades twirl around
(subordinate clause).
Wind Power
We love to walk up the hill behind our house.
You can see the whole city.
You can see right out to the ocean.
The wind blows there most of the time.
It blows the grass flat.
It’s too windy for trees to grow.
At the top of the hill there is a big machine.
A wind turbine.
The turbine looks like a windmill.
It sounds like a windmill as the blades twirl around.
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
The wind blows the blades around.
The blades turn the generator.
The generator makes electricity.
And we use electricity every day,
for all kinds of things …