© Boardworks Ltd 2003 1 of 18 Synthesizing Information For more detailed instructions, see the...

© Boardworks Ltd 20031 of 18

Synthesizing Information

For more detailed instructions, see the Getting Started presentation.

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Synthesizing information

Where can information on a specific topic be obtained?

Fiction and Non-Fiction Books

Internet

Newspapers

Television

Radio

Magazines

Journals.


When you are reading (or listening) to information it is important to bear in where the information comes from. Even if the writing is informative, writers may vary in what their interpretation of the ‘facts’ are. As a reader it is your job to read, evaluate and synthesize information in order to formulate a coherent and accurate account as you see it. This account may be written or spoken.

READ EVALUATE SYNTHESIZE



Read and understand


Have you ever made anything from different materials Blue Peter style?

If you have, then you may not find synthesizing information into a coherent piece of writing too difficult. It’s all about mixing up your information to create something new, personal but understandable for readers.

Creating something new


Look at the map below – could you find your way from the school to the shop? Write down the directions for someone who hasn’t access to a map.

School

Shop

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Post Office

Cinema

Written instructions


Synthesizing information – activity


What do you already know about New York City?

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Sharing information


Photos


History

Giovanni de Verrazano may have been the first European to explore the region, and Henry Hudson visited it, but Dutch settlements truly began the city. In 1624 the town of New Amsterdam was established on lower Manhattan; Peter Minuit supposedly bought the island from its Native American inhabitants for about $24 worth of trinkets. In 1664 the English seized the colony and renamed it; during the American Revolution they held it from 1776 to 1781. New York was briefly (1789-90) the U.S. capital and was state capital until 1797.

Encyclopaedia


Orientation

New York City consists of five ‘boroughs’ entities that came together in 1898 to form ‘Greater New York City.’ A series of island make up the city’s 309-sq-mile land mass. Manhattan and Staten Island stand alone; Queens and Brooklyn comprise the western end of Long Island. Only the Bronx is connected to US mainland.

Served by three major airports, two train terminals and a massive bus depot, New York City is the most important transportation hub in the northeast.

Travel guide


Spend

In New York, as in London, keeping up with the style dictators is a much more ambiguous gig than it is elsewhere. Must-visit shops spring up on a weekly basis, generating instantaneous buzz. Whatever you’re looking for – a perfect corduroy mini, a hand-cast ceramic sake set, or bootleg DJ session compilations – you’ll find, provided you know where to look.

Magazine article


I live in New York and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go.

Fiction writing offers more quirky and often abstract information about people and places.

Novel


Alfieri:

I only cam here when I was twenty-five. In those days, Al Capone… was learning his trade on these pavements, and Frankie Yale himself was cut precisely in half by a machine gun on the corner of union street, two blocks away. Oh there were many man here who were justly shot by unjust men. Justice is important here. This is the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge. This is the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world. And now we are quite civilized, quite American. Now we settle for half and I like it better. I no longer keep a pistol in my filing cabinet.

Play


www.timeoutny.com/cityguide/

Different websites offer different information. The Time Out site is useful because it provides regularly updated news on the city.

Under normal circumstances, New York City is easy to navigate. However, in light of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and long-term bridge and tunnel reconstruction, subway services in lower Manhattan changes frequently and with short notice, which, in turn effects the entire system…

Internet


Try these websites to find out more about the city.

www.nytimes.com

www.nyctourist.com

Have you ever seen a film or television programme set in New York?

Watch a few to find out even more about NYC!

Manhattan by Woody Allen is particularly famous.

More sources of information


Quiz


Now that you have read a little about NYC and completed some of your own research, it is time to collate this information you have gathered and transfer it into a Guide to New York.

The Guide must give a fair amount of information but try to be entertaining too and add pictures if you can.

Don’t forget to:use your own wordswrite in standard Englishtry to group specific types of information together e.g. ‘Shopping’ could be one section, ‘Getting Around’ anotherbe concise and selective – only select and use information which is useful to the reader – not everything you’ve discovered!


© Boardworks Ltd 2003 1 of 18 Synthesizing Information For more detailed instructions, see the...

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