Reading Workshop

Reading Matching Heading Questions

AIMS:

To identify tips and strategies that allow students to understand the main idea of a paragraph.
To learn how to match headings and paragraphs in a more effective way.

What are headings?

Headings are short sentences that summarize the information in a paragraph. You have to pick the one that best
summarizes the information
ACTIVITY 1
When answering matching heading questions there are some common problems we have to deal with. Read the
following problems and rank them according to the ones you find more or less common.
_____ There is too much information to get through and not enough time.
_____ Trying to match a word or words from the headings to a word in the text.
_____ Some of the headings may appear to have the same meaning.
_____ You only read the first sentence of each paragraph and do not understand the main idea of it.
_____ You spend too much time on one paragraph or heading.
_____ Answers are not in the same order as the text.

ACTIVITY 2
Watch the following video and take notes on the tips and strategies you can keep in mind for matching headings to
paragraphs (Watch the first 4 minutes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMq1Oo725bU
1. _________________________________________________________
2. _________________________________________________________
3. _________________________________________________________
4. _________________________________________________________
5. _________________________________________________________

ACTIVITY 3
Read the two paragraphs taken from the text called Trees in Trouble- What is causing the decline of the Worlds giant
forests?
Paragraph 1- Big tress are incredibly important ecologically. For a start, they sustain countless other species. They
provide shelter for many animals, and their trunks and branches can become gardens, hung with green ferns, orchids
and bromeliads, coated with mosses and draped with vines. With their tall canopies basking in the sun, they capture vast
amounts of energy. This allows them to sustain much of the animal life in the forest.
Paragraph 2- Only a small number of tree species have the genetic capacity to grow really big. The mightiest are native
to Norther America, but big trees grow all over the globe, from the tropics to the boreal forests of the high latitudes. To
achieve giant stature, a tree needs three things: the right place to establish its seedling, good growing conditions and
lots of time with low adult mortality. Disrupt any of these, and you can lost your biggest trees.
Match the two paragraphs with one of the three headings following the next steps:

Read and underline the first and the last sentence of each paragraph.
Skim the middle of the text.
Look at the headings and identify keywords within each one. Check synonyms.
Eliminate the headings that definitely do not fit for each paragraph.

ACTIVITY 3.1
Match the following heading to the paragraphs. There is one extra heading that you do not need to use.

Headings:
1. How wildlife benefits from big tress
2. Factors that enable trees to grow to significant heights
3. How other plants can cause harm

Taken and adapted from http://ieltsadvantage.com/2015/03/04/ielts-reading-matching-headings-tips-and-strategy/

ACTIVITY 4
Read the following passage and answer the questions.
The revolutionary bridges of Robert Malliard
A. Just as railway bridges were the great structural symbols of the 19th century, highway bridges became the engineering
emblems of the 20th century. The invention of the automobile created an irresistible demand for paved roads and
vehicular bridges in the developed world. The type of bridge needed for cars and trucks, however, is fundamentally
different from that needed for locomotives. Most highway bridges carry lighter loads than railway bridges do, and the
roadways can be sharply curved. To meet these needs, many new bridge designers began working with a new building
material: reinforced concrete, which has steel bars embedded in it. And the master of this new material was Swiss
structural engineer, Robert Malliart.
B. Early in his career, Malliart developed a unique method for designing bridges, buildings and other concrete structures.
He rejected the complex mathematical analysis of loads and stresses that had been enthusiastically adopted by most of
his contemporaries. At the same time, he also embraced the decorative approach taken by many bridge builders of his
time. He resisted imitating architectural styles and adding design elements solely for ornamentation. His method was a
form of creative intuition. He had a knack for conceiving new shapes to solve classic engineering problems. And because
he worked in a highly competitive field, one of his goals was economy - he won design and construction contracts
because his structures were reasonably priced, often less costly than all his rivals proposals.
C. Malliarts first important bridge was built in the small Swiss town of Zuos. The local officials had initially wanted a
steel bridge to span the 30-metre wide Inn River, but Malliart argued that he could build a more elegant bridge made of
reinforced concrete for about the same cost. His crucial innovation was incorporating the bridges arch and roadway into
a form called the hollow box arch, which would substantially reduce the bridges expense by minimizing the amount of
concrete needed. In a conventional arch bridge the weight of the roadway is transferred by columns to the arch, which
must be relatively thick. In Malliarts design, though the roadway and arch were connected by three vertical walls,
forming two hollow boxes running under the roadway.
D. Before his death in 1940, Malliart completed other remarkable bridges and continued to reform his design. However,
architects often recognized the high-quality of Malliarts structures before his fellow engineers did and in 1947 the
architectural section of the museum of modern Art in New York City devoted a major exhibition entirely to his works. In
contrast, very few Americans structural engineers at that time had even heard of Malliart. In the following years,
however, engineers realized that Malliarts bridges were more than just aesthetically pleasing - they were technically
unsurpassed. Malliarts hollow-box arch became the dominant design form for medium and long-span concrete bridges
in the United States. In Switzerland, professors finally began to teach Malliarts ideas, which then influenced a new
generation of designers.
I. From the list of headings below choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph. There is one extra heading
that you do not need to use.
List of Headings
1. Outdated methods retain popularity
2. The basis of a new design is born
3. Different in all respects
4. Transport developments spark a new change

List of Paragraphs
1. Paragraph A _____
2. Paragraph B _____
3. Paragraph C _____