2th topic: Making the Leap:

From Concrete to Abstract

▫We are going to examine a key element of comprehension -
namely, the ability to move between specific wording and more
abstract or general ideas.
▫Writers move between speci c phrasings and more general
language by using pronouns (this, that) and abstract or
comprehension nouns (notion, assertion, phenomenon).

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✅Why use Pronouns?

▫It is important that you be able to connect pronouns back to

their referents because without the ability to “track” an idea
through a passage, you can easily lose track of the passage’s
focus and argument.
ℹCompare the following two versions of this passage. First without pronouns:
ℹNotice how incredibly awkward and repetitive this version is. Now
look at this version, which replaces the repeated nouns with pronouns.

👀 Notice how much smoother this version is.

▫Words like idea or assertion or concept - words that don’t refer
to actual physical objects - are also nouns. These nouns are
sometimes referred to as abstract nouns or comprehension nouns.

ℹ In fact, the ability to recognize the relationship between

abstract nouns and the ideas that they refer to is central to
making sense out of many passages.

➡ Let’s look to the example at the following page:

 ▫If the author did not “compress” the information, the
passage would read like this:

❗In this version, the second sentence repeats all of the information from
the rst sentence, creating an exceedingly long and awkward
construction.
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 ℹ The Former and the Latter
▫One set of comprehension nouns that has a tendency to give people
di culty is “the former and the latter”. The former is used to refer back to
the noun or phrase mentioned rst, and the latter is used to refer back to
the noun or phrase mentioned second.
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