ACTIVITY 9 - Using wordprocessing to organise text.

Use a word processor to make a large chunk of text more accessible.
We frequently expect our A Level students to read and quickly digest quite complicated texts, and to make sense of them. Here is an example of how using a word-processor can make this task easier. We will use an extract from a book by Robert Conquest, The Great Terror about Stalin's Russia. It was used recently as part of an A Level exam paper.

• Download and Open the File 'The Great Terror' by right clicking here and selecting either 'Save Target As' or 'Save Link As'. Save the file in the c:\ directory. Start Word from your Windows Menu bar and Open the file you have just saved.
• Highlight any words of which the meaning might be unclear to you or your students.
• Use the THESAURUS to find an alternative word.
  • To do this go to the drop-down TOOLS menu
  • Left click the mouse and choose LANGUAGE.
  • Follow the arrow right and choose THESAURUS. This will offer alternative words to any you highlight.
• Enter sub-headings in the text, to help you summarise the key arguments.
• UNDERLINE these so they stand out.
• Use BOLD to emphasise factual statements in the text.
• Use ITALIC to emphasise Robert Conquest's own opinions in the text.
• Produce a list of 3 or 4 bullet-points underneath the text to summarise the key points about Stalin and the Purges.
  • You can find BULLET-POINTS on the toolbar, usually listed as a series of square dots. Each time you press 'return', a new bullet point will appear at the beginning of the new line.
• Close or Save your work.

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Wordprocessing Activity 10

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