Hints: Texts C


     These two texts on the same topic, the desirability or undesirability of atomic power, help to clarify what it means to say that a text presents its material "abstractly" or "concretely."

     Text C, the flier "12 Fragen zur 'friedlichen' Nutzung der Atomenergie," is long, but there are many cognate words in this difficult text that might help the reader (e.g. Reaktorkatastrophe, Plutonium, gigantische Industrien).
     What makes this text especially difficult, however, is that it is organized around abstract ideas:  questions for and against nuclear energy.  Moreover, the first lines of the flier don't explicitly signal that the "did you know" statements that follow are all against nuclear energy.  To figure this out, a reader has to burrow deeply into the content or rhetorical organization of the text.  The reader is not instantly set up in a concrete context, in a known place and time, with known characters. Who or what is the "Rheinthal-Aktion" -- who are the authors?  What are they taking about -- everybody's nuclear energy, or just their own?  What is their mission  -- for or against nuclear energy?  What is the time frame of the text; that is, when is the issue happening -- is it about today, or old reactors, or new reactors planned for the future?  Such specifics are implicit, abstract, in this text.
     If you chose this text as more readable than the other, it is probably because the topic and the vocabulary is more familiar to you, or because you were able to translate the sentences.  It is also more international in address, reflecting general anti-nuclear rhetoric rather than a specific situation in Switzerland.


 TEXT PAIR 2, EXERCISE 1
 TEXT PAIR 3, EXERCISE 1