Please open a Google doc with the title, "What is a Text? + Your Name", and use that document to gather evidence throughout this unit.

Text is any recorded creation that communicates meaning.

Apart from traditional forms of language-based texts and literary texts, there are a range of more modern text types which we need to be able to understand in the 21st Century.

These include:

• Online News Articles;
• Social Media posts (Facebook, Instagram etc.);
• Youtube videos;
• Movies;
• Advertisements etc. 

To understand these texts we need to be able to not only read the language of the writing, but also powerful cues in visual messages, such as colour connotation, images, choice of font and layout. 

A still from Martin Scorsese's iconic film Taxi Driver

Write a 50-100 word response to the still above. You might like to refer to these key details. 

• What name would you give the character? 
• What emotions do you think are running through his mind? 
• Who is he pointing the gun at? Why? 
• Where is this scene located? (time of day, which city? what kind of place within the city?) 

Finally, answer this: Do you think this is a text? Why or why not?

As critical readers of language or literature, we use our detective skills to "zoom in" on key details and extract information that we are told explicitly, and then deduce what we can infer about a character, setting, or situation.

Take a look at the master detective, Sherlock Holmes, in action.  

Now take a look at the following images. For each, write down 5-10 things you can see. Then write a sentence or two, explaining what you can infer about the image. 

Here's an example to guide you: 

Now you try!

Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927. 

Taj Mahal, India.

Green Day, American Idiot (Album Cover), 2004.

Throughout this unit you have been adding reflections to a Google doc. Now you are ready to proofread (check for any spelling mistakes, make sure it has a title: "What is a Text? + Your Name" and then submit!