How to plan a text: a super-cheat sheet in Russian

2024 Author: Angel Austin | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:14

In Russian lessons, very little time is devoted to how to plan the text. And in vain, because this is a really useful skill that will come in handy not only when writing summaries and essays, but also in other subjects. A well-written plan will help you refresh your memory of key points and logical connections, and better understand the material.

Definition

The plan is a list of main thoughts that reveal the content of the text, the sequence of facts and the logical connections between them. Simply put, these are short notes, looking at which, you can easily restore the text in memory, and ideally, retell it without confusing anything. The plan is often called the "skeleton" of the work - what remains after removing all unnecessary details, details and artistic techniques.

Plan types

So, our task is to convey the essence of the text. However, you can write down key thoughts in different ways: in your own words or with the help of quotations, in monosyllables or more detailed. With this in mind, it is customary to distinguish 5 types of text plan.

Type	Features	Example
Thesis	Concisely conveys the meaning of each part of the text. Contains a large number of verbs.	The three little pigs built their own home. The wolf came and blew down the houses made of straw and brushwood. The pigs hid with a brother who was not lazy and made a house out of stone. The wolf could not break the third house, burned himself in the chimney and ran away.
Denominative	Based on short abstracts with lots of nouns and adjectives.	House of the three little pigs. Attack of the wolf. Destruction of houses made of straw and branches. Stone house rescue. Victory over the wolf.
Questionary	Each paragraph is a question to a certain part of the text. By answering them, you can fully restore the content.	What houses did the three little pigs have? Why did the wolf easily break two houses? How did the piglets escape?
Reference circuit	A mini-summary of keywords and sentence snippets that help convey the meaning of the text.	Three little pigs build houses: from straw (Nif-Nif), branches (Nuf-Nuf) and stone (Naf-Naf). Encounter with a hungry wolf in the forest, chase. The wolf breaks houses made of straw and branches (blowing). Shelter in the stone “fortress” of Naf-Naf. Wolf can't break it, wants to crawl up the chimney. Victory over the wolf (heat the cauldron,the wolf gets burned and runs away).
Combined	Combines several types.	Piglets build houses (straw, brushwood, stone). Why did Nif-Nif and Nuf-Nuf laugh at Naf-Naf? Encounter with the wolf. What happened to the houses of Nif-Nif and Nuf-Nuf? Piglets run to Naf-Naf and hide from him (“No animal in the world will open this door”). The wolf cannot destroy the stone house and decides: “I will get into the house through the pipe.” Piglets are heating the cauldron. The wolf gets burned, flies back and runs into the forest.

Speaking about how to plan the text, first of all, you need to decide on its type. For oral retelling, for example, theses and supporting schemes are more suitable, and questions can be safely used for writing or analysis.

Simple and complex plans

The next question to ask yourself is how important are the details? If you can omit them, and convey the essence of the material in your own words, you can limit yourself to a simple plan of 3-5 points.

And how to plan the text in order to recreate the full picture, to reveal the plot and all the nuances as much as possible? In this case, each of the main blocks should be further divided into 3-4 subparagraphs. Here's what it looks like:

Simple plan

Complex plan

1) Cinderella's life in a new family. 2) Preparing the stepmother and sisters for the ball. 3) Fairy Godmother Appears. 4) Cinderella in the palace. Meeting withprince. 5) Escape from the castle. Loss of the glass slipper. 6) Prince in search of Cinderella. 7) Decoupling. Meeting of lovers. Wedding of Cinderella and Prince.

1) Cinderella's life in a new family. Why did the heroine's father decide to marry again? The attitude of the stepmother and stepsisters towards the girl. How did the nickname "Cinderella" come about? 2) Getting ready for the ball. Why the sisters wanted to go to the ball. What did the stepmother do to prevent Cinderella from “going around”? The thoughts of the heroine when she was left alone. 3) Fairy Godmother Appears… etc.

Learning to plan the text using the example of a fairy tale

In fact, the most difficult thing is to learn how to break a whole story into semantic blocks. How to plan the text correctly? Let's analyze this process using the example of the fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" by H. H. Andersen.

1. Read the material carefully.

2. Highlight and briefly write down the main idea of the piece.

Example:

"Everyone around laughed and mocked the ugly duckling, but he survived all the tests and turned into a beautiful swan, leaving them behind."

3. Divide the text into logical blocks. It is most convenient to mark their borders with a pencil.

4. Reread the first part and highlight key events/facts/thoughts. Try to convey the essence in one sentence.

Example:

"A young duck hatches its eggs. Together with the ducklings, a huge, ugly chick hatches."

5. Similarly, analyze and title each semantic segment of the text.

Examples:

• "Family and other birds taunt unusual duckling."
• "Escape from the yard and life in the swamp. Acquaintance with wild ducks and ganders."
• "Meet the hunters" etc.

6. Write down all the abstracts in a column and reread. Make sure the outline accurately conveys the content of the text, and you did not miss any episode.

It's easy to figure out how to plan a text. But in order to learn how to write them correctly, fit maximum information in short abstracts.

Plan Analysis

The next point to stop in order to figure out how to plan the text are examples of the most common mistakes that students make. Be sure to review your work. What to look out for?

1. Informative. Points should not be too general (for example, just "Ugly Duckling" will not tell you anything).
2. Length. Descriptions should not be too detailed - the plan should only mention those details that are necessary to understand the topic, idea and logic of the text.
3. Proportionality. It is desirable that the points are the same. Too short should be removed or combined with more deployed.
4. Structure. The plan must have an introduction and a conclusion.
5. Sequence. Each point should follow logically from the previous one.
6. Formulations. They should not be repeated or layered in content on adjacent abstracts.
7. Logic. It is important that you plan give an idea of cause and effect and other relationships between the blocks ("Due to … happened …, which led to …").

The best test is to give the plan a "rest" for a couple of days (or at least hours), and then, using only it, try to retell the text as close to the original as possible.

Helpful tips

Now that you know how to plan a text in Russian, it's time to talk about little tricks that will help you cope with the task faster and better.

• To highlight semantic blocks, focus on paragraphs - as a rule, each contains one complete thought.
• Highlight the bright images that you remember the most and try to use them in your headlines.
• Work on the design. For main points, simple numbering (1, 2, 3) is usually used, and for sub-points - double (1.1, 1.2, 1.3) or letters (a, b, c).
• If you can't come up with a title, look at what words/terms are used most often in this passage and build on that.
• The draft plan should be sketched out already at the first reading, when you follow the author's thought more closely and notice the boundaries of thoughts.

Remember that a lot depends on what you are writing the plan for. On the control, you cansimply list the main topics that are covered in the text. But if you are doing this for yourself, in order to better absorb and remember the material, it is better not to be lazy and make a complex plan, noting important details.