The assignment for this lesson is to read a passage and answer the following questions: What inference can you make from this pa
ssage? What explicit and implicit details support your inference? The population of the Southwest is growing more quickly than the national average. Desert cities like San Antonio, Phoenix, and Los Angeles now boast populations in the millions. This population boom is hard on the desert environments of these cities. The most obvious issue is the lack of water. Because these cities get less than 10 inches of average rainfall a year, they rely on water in rivers flowing from the Rocky Mountain region, almost 800 miles away. Though water shortages are a concern in many areas, this is especially true in the deserts of southern California, Arizona, and Texas. These shortages can pose problems for everyone, from farmers to normal citizens. One result of water shortages is an increase in wildfires, such as those that have occurred recently near Los Angeles. Such fires have the potential to destroy property and hurt or kill people.
After reading the passage above, one can infer that it belongs to an article or an essay which purpose is to inform the reader about the population boom and its consequences (cause-effect writing). The writer developed the main event in the introduction of the passage and then added supporting sentences about the consequences of that main event. The population is growing in cities such as San Antonio, Phoenix, and Los Angeles and this event has serious effects on the desert environment of these cities mentioned earlier, being the most obvious one the water shortages. The reader can infer all this information thanks to the organization of the text and the words or connectors used. The organization that has been used by the writer is The Casual Chain (one effect is a cause of another effect, which in turn can become a cause of another effect, and so on) and some of the words/connectors chosen to describe the relationship of the events are “result”, “Because…,”, and “concern”.
