The headings question is one of the most challenging for most students.
So in this lecture we're going to go ahead and work on a strategy application for the Headings question.
In regards to strategy is fairly straightforward.
You want to first read through the choices.
For example, here we have one through eight and you would review those choices and highlight the keywords
in those answer choices.
Then you want to move forward with tackling the first paragraph.
I like to really go ahead and do the smaller paragraphs first because they're a little bit easier and
it just feels good psychologically to start getting some write quickly.
In regards to strategy of what sentences to read.
I am a firm believer that all you need to do is really look at the first two sentences of a paragraph.
Now it's okay to look at the last sentence if you just feel that you need to.
And sometimes it is helpful.
But my experience and what I'm going to show you over there over the next few lectures is that really
85 to 90% of the time you only need the first two sentences.
And then you have to apply the answer strategy which involves your ability to paraphrase the headings
question is a paraphrasing question.
They want to know, can you first determine a central main idea of a paragraph?
And then can you find a paraphrase that captures that same central main idea of that paragraph?
What makes this one of the most difficult questions for students?
As I was just saying, the requirement to understand paraphrasing.
It demands that a student understand contextual paraphrasing and also that a student is able to determine
a central controlling idea of a paragraph.
The better you're able to do that, the easier this exam is going to be.
So where is the controlling idea?
That's the main question, right?
Where is the controlling idea?
You're always going to find a controlling idea in the first sentence of the paragraph.
Sometimes it's the first two sentences.
Depending on how the author is writing the paragraph.
But the vast majority of the time, the controlling idea or central idea is found in the topic sentence,
which is the first sentence of a paragraph.
And then the second sentence kind of narrows the focus even a little bit more.
You want to avoid falling for traps on the headings question.
Keep in mind that a paragraph location question involves spotting specific details, whereas a headings
question involves identifying the overall main central idea of a paragraph.
So for a headings question, wrong answers relate to specific details that attractively use exact words.
You're not looking for specific details.
That's why reading more than the topic sentence reading the third, fourth or fifth sentence really
gets students in a lot of trouble because then they start looking at the details and that's not the
point of a headings question.
So coming up next, we're going to take a look at a full passage application.
So let's get ready for that.
This one comes from Cambridge Book ten, Test three, Part one.
The context, meaning and scope of tourism is in Book ten, so please take out your book ten and practice
along with me.
So here you can see I have the beginning of the reading on the left and it concludes on the right.
Now they tell us we're only looking at B, C, D and E.
So on my screen you're only going to see paragraph B, C, D and E.
They give us the answer to paragraph A.
So we don't need to have it on our screen.
Our first step is to identify the key words and the answer choices.
Keep in mind, you're not going to be looking for these exact words.
You're going to be looking for which topic sentences, which first two sentences of a paragraph capture
the same meaning.
We're matching meaning or paraphrasing.
So what I want you to do is set your clock for 45 seconds.
Stop the lecture and quickly identify the keywords in the list of headings.
Please do that now.
So for number one, economic and social significance.
And then to have development and mass tourism.
Three wealthy for foreign exchange through tourism.
Five Difficulty economic effects.
Six Air travel.
Seven World impact.
And eight history of travel.
So again, keep in mind, we're going to have to primarily look for synonyms and paraphrasing.
So with the headings question, we can move directly into answering the question.
There's no scanning aspect.
You go to the first paragraph or the smallest paragraph to start first.
If you look at the first two sentences, you determine the central main idea.
And then you find which of the headings matches that same central main idea for that paragraph.
So please set your clock for 6 minutes right now and please answer questions one through four.
Let's check and see if you were able to answer correctly for questions one through four.
Paragraph B the answer is two.
Paragraph C the answer is one, paragraph three the answer is five, and paragraph E the answer is seven.
In terms of analysis.
The first one for be is clearly to the development of mass tourism.
They tell us in the topic sentence, tourism in the mass form as we know it today is distinctly 20th
century phenomenon.
The word phenomenon is another way of saying development.
And then in the next sentence they tell us that it began in England.
It's not necessary for me to read the rest of these sentences.
It is not necessary to do that.
Because the remaining sentences are just aren't going to give me more details about how mass tourism
developed.
There's no reason to read the other sentences.
We know it's about mass tourism, and the word phenomenon tells us that it's about development.
Paragraph C The answer is I.
The first one economic and social significance.
Now, this one was probably the most probably the easiest to do.
Tourism today has grown significantly in both economic and social importance.
That topic sentence tells us everything.
Everything.
Just reading that topic sentence tells us that this entire paragraph is going to be about the growth
of tourism significantly.
And also it's about economic and social importance.
Right.
Economic and social significance, paraphrasing importance.
That one was very straightforward.
Number three for paragraph RD.
However, the major problems of the travel and tourism industry that have hidden or obscured its economic
impact are the diversity and fragmentation of the industry itself.
We can see here that the paragraph starts off by referencing major problems, which is equivalent to
difficult or difficulty.
And then it's talking about that is hidden or obscured.
That's the difficulty in recognizing the economic effects.
A synonym for effects is impact.
If you can match up with the synonyms or paraphrasing, you can do well on this question.
And Paragraph E.
The topic sentence says.
Become an institutionalized way of life for most of the population, and this is equivalent to world
impact.
If something has become an institutionalized way of life for most of the population.
They're talking about it on a global scale.
A global scale.
Also in that second sentence they're talking about that Macintosh and Golder suggests that tourism has
become the largest commodity in international trade for many nations, a significant number of other
countries.
So everything they're talking about here is dealing with the world impact of tourism.
Now you see some of this language in red.
And the language in red, I'm trying to point out to you, is used as an exact language trap.
Like here, they're hoping a student reads this specific detail about the airline industry.
And then after reading that specific detail about the airline industry, that they're going to then
look towards one of these answers, like here, number six, the contribution of air travel.
Remember I told you?
That with a headings question, you want to avoid the specific details again in the final sentence of
paragraph b.
They talk about another specific detail about a means of earning foreign exchange.
Again with this one, they're trying to get you to choose number four as an answer choice.
Do not fall for picking specific details as an answer choice.
And for this one that talks about the foreign exchange, that's an example of why generally, generally
I teach to avoid the last sentence.
The only reason to look at the last sentence is if for some reason those first two sentences are vague.
Because very often what they'll do is they'll pull out some specific little detail mentioned in the
last sentence, put it as an answer choice.
But that's not the central main idea for the entire paragraph, and that's what you want to focus on.
Thank you very much for joining me.
I hope you better understand how to manage the headings.
Question.