Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining me today as we delve into another general reading strategy
strategy video and today we're going to be looking at the headings.
Question Many students have requested to have more videos on the headings.
Question The headings question is actually not complicated in terms of strategy is not complicated.
The strategy for the headings question is actually really, really straightforward.
The difficulty for most students is that they have trouble applying it because the headings question
is one of the few questions that actually requires you to understand what's being said in the entire
sentence.
You have to be able to understand what is the controlling idea and main idea of that paragraph.
And so that requires a deeper level of understanding.
And so sometimes students who actually have students who actually have a little bit of trouble with
this question are normally students who have a lower level of English, because it's kind of a challenge
to be able to process the topic sentences in a paragraph and then get the meaning of it.
So let's take a look at the strategy first, and then we're going to go into this particular book,
this particular passage.
This passage is from book number 12.
From book number 12.
So let's go ahead and get started with this with this one here.
First, let's look at the strategy.
All right.
This is our strategy page, as you know, where all of the reading strategies are summarized.
And our headings question is on the second page.
The second page.
If I didn't say this earlier in the earlier videos, the second page is where none of these questions
go in order.
The first page is all the questions go in order.
And that's very important to understand when it comes to the aisles exam is which questions go in order
and which questions don't go in order.
So for a headings question, the first thing I suggest you do is quickly scan through the headings and
underline the keywords and the answer choices.
I think that's really helpful.
It gives you two things happen.
Number one, it gives you a quick assessment or understanding of what that reading passage is going
to be about, right?
Because these are all headaches.
And so if you move through the headings pretty quickly, you get a general idea of what you're about
to read.
All right, then you want to do the shortest paragraphs first.
If there is a way to tell the difference between the terms of the size of the paragraphs and do the
shortest ones first, some some sections will have two paragraphs in one section.
And then what you want to do is go to the first paragraph.
There's, I guess, the first shortest paragraph, if there's a short one, and I would say read the
first and second sentence.
Now, no other people have suggested that you read the first and the last sentence.
But honestly, I really believe in reading the first two sentences because to really answer this question,
well, all you have to do is get a really good understanding of what the paragraph is about.
And the first sentence of any paragraph is a topic sentence.
And the topic sentence actually tells you what that paragraph is about.
It tells you what they're going to discuss in that paragraph and nothing, nothing else in that paragraph.
Nothing else in that paragraph can deviate from what is the controlling idea in the topic sentence.
So if you understand that, you can actually find the right answer, and I say the first and the second
sentence, because sometimes the topic sentences can be a combination of the first two sentences.
All right.
Now, if you read the first two sentences and then look at the headings choices and you can't find a
choice that you really like, then maybe you can go ahead and read the last sentence also.
But sometimes I'm not a big fan of reading the last sentence because the last sentence is not really
a concluding sentence for a lot of these paragraphs is not a traditional concluding sentence where a
concluding sentence actually summarizes what the paragraph was about or what was talked about in the
paragraph.
They normally don't have really true concluding sentences, but sometimes reading the last sentence
can give you a also a better understanding.
But when you see me working through it, you're going to see me working through it using the first two
sentences so I can get the main idea of what they're talking about and then find the headings that captures
that main idea.
And and then, like I said, if that doesn't work, they read the last sentence.
But that's the key to this question, being able to pull out the controlling idea from the topic sentence.
That's the key.
That's the real key.
And when we're talking about this one, we're talking about this headings question right here.
I guess I should highlight it.
I've been doing it with the other videos, but this is the one that we're talking about in terms of
the headings question.
Okay.
All right.
So let's go ahead and get started.
When we look at this one here, let's go down.
And we're dealing with our list of headings right here.
All right.
Now, when I look at my when I look quickly look at my keywords, right?
And the first one, why fairy crossing has been difficult.
The second one is really easy in terms of understanding building a bridge.
First was talking about advantage of the design.
Fourth one is talking about the popularity of the bridge.
The next one is talking about opposition to the bridge.
Right.
Excuse me.
And then we're talking about for the sixth one, benefits and disadvantages.
And then we're talking about propose alternatives to the ferry and how bridge has contributed to the
growth and a rising demand for rising demand for transport.
Alright, so I'd like to look at what we're talking about first and the reason why is it's good for
me just to, you know, now I have, now I have an understanding of what I'm about to read about.
I'm about to read.
Reading passages, talking about fairies and bridges and the advantages of building a bridge.
How they felt about the bridge.
The advantages of the bridge, alternatives of ferries and bridges.
So I have a good understanding of what I'm about to read about.
And now my job is to go look at those topics sentences and get the meaning and pull that out what I'm
looking for.
All right.
So let's go ahead and look at our goal.
Let's look at if we have any really short ones here.
F is.
Pretty short.
The.
See.
A So like B is a long one, c b is a two paragraph one.
I will probably come back to that one.
So it doesn't matter where you start.
I'm going to start with F and I would probably look at this first two sentences, right, and try to
have a look at these first two sentences.
I one moment.
Okay, sorry about that.
I had to step away for a second, just for 1/2.
Okay.
So when we look at these first two sentences here, Malcolm Stockwell, the bridge master, recalls
that when the bridge first opened, there wasn't a great deal of interest in it.
So I'm only actually going to look at that first sentence, right?
I'm looking at that first sentence.
I'm going to point something out to you.
When we look at this first sentence, what is this first sentence about?
Let me look at it a little bit different.
We look at this first sentence.
The first sentence.
What is the controlling idea of this paragraph?
Right.
What does this paragraph want to talk about?
This paragraph is going to talk about what this paragraph is going to talk about that there wasn't a
great interest in the bridge.
Right.
That's what this paragraph was going to talk about when it opened.
There wasn't a great interest in the bridge.
Right.
So that's what this whole paragraph is talking about.
Interest.
Interest in the bridge.
Right.
And then we read then we read the next sentence and it says, then children started visiting.
Right.
And so we're talking about a change.
First sentence is when the bridge first opened, there was a deal, a great deal of interest.
The next sentence is then that means a change, right?
A change from when it first opened.
Right there talking about the interest changed.
The interest changed because the whole paragraph is about the interest right now.
Go back, look at your headings and which of these headings is talking something about people's interest.
Right.
There's only one answer here that's talking about people's interest.
People having an interest.
The first the first sentence is when the bridge opened, there wasn't a great deal of interest.
Second sentence then children started visiting.
That second sentence is telling you things are about to change.
Then children started coming.
So we're talking about the interest, changing the interest.
The whole paragraph was about that.
The only answer that that can be is number four, the growing popularity of the bridge.
Whenever you're talking about people's interests, at first they're not being a lot of interest, then
there is a lot of interest because of the children coming.
We're talking about popularity.
Popularity, popularity, popularity.
All right.
There's no other answer choice that's talking about interest.
All right.
So we talk about this one.
We're talking about that was what paragraph was that?
That was paragraph F.
That means paragraph F is going to be number four.
Or S.F..
Is number four.
S.F. is number four.
All right, now let's move on.
And I did that first one just to get it out the way, because a short paragraph, but I can move through
it really quickly.
Just try to move through it.
That was good.
Now let's move on and look at paragraph A.
I'm going to go ahead and go to paragraph A and let's look at our first two sentences of paragraph A.
Right now for thousands of years, the Humber for thousands of years, the Humber and Estuary formed
when the two major were where two major rivers, the Trent and the Wu's I hope meet has been an obstacle
to the communications along the east coast of England, between the counties of Yorkshire and to the
South Lincolnshire to the south.
Before the arrival of the railways in the 19th century, where transportation was most efficient means
of moving heavy or bulk freight.
And the Humber situated at the waterway.
Och we don't the read all that, we don't read all that because actually what you need to do is again,
let's make it simple, let's make it simple as keep it simple.
Let's just look at the first sentence, right?
Look at this first sentence.
And in this first sentence, just tell me in this first sentence, what is this first sentence about?
Right.
Look at it.
And see if you can tell.
What is this first sentence about?
Right.
What does this whole paragraph want to talk about?
When you look at this first sentence, basically what it's saying is for thousands of years, there
was this estuary.
And what happened?
This estuary has been what?
This estuary has been a obstacle to communications.
Right.
This estuary has been an obstacle to communications.
That means this entire paragraph is going to talk about how it's been an obstacle.
Right.
What is the first sentence about?
What is the topic sentence about this whole what it did tells you what the paragraph is going to talk
about that helps, you know, what's the proper heading that you should have.
So we're looking at it and we're saying, okay, it's been an obstacle to communications.
So we know we have to have an answer choice that's talking about obstacles.
We know we have to have our answer choices, talking about obstacles.
So let's look back at our answer choices.
All right.
Now we're talking about here we see the word difficult, which can mean obstacle.
But we know from the topic sentence, we're not talking about fairies, so that can't be our answer.
This one, number three is talking about advantages.
That can't be our answer, because our answer choice has to have something synonym for disadvantage.
All right.
Number four is already gone.
Can't be used twice.
That's how my popularity that deals with interest, people's interest.
Here's our answer right here.
Number six, right here, we see disadvantage.