This article will help you match headings more effectively in the IELTS reading test. In the IELTS reading test you may be asked to match headings to sections of text. This type of question tests your ability to understand the main idea of each paragraph.
Headings are short sentences that summarise the information in a paragraph. You have to pick the one that best summarises the information in a paragraph.
You will be given between 5 and 7 headings and asked to match each paragraph in the reading text to one heading. There are always more headings than paragraphs. In this post we will look at:
1. Common problems 2. Tips
3. Strategy 4. Practice
Common Problems
Below is a list of common problems my students tend to have. Have you experienced any of these problems?
1. Later in the post we will look at tips to overcome these problems and a strategy for answering this kind of reading question.
2. There is too much information to get through and not enough time.
3. Trying to match a word or words from the headings to a word in the text.
4. Some of the headings may appear to have the same meaning.
5. Some students only read the first sentence of each paragraph and do not understand the main idea of the paragraph.
6. Spending too much time on one paragraph or heading.
7. Answers are not in the same order as the text.
Tips and Solutions
1. Do this question first. By doing this you will be able to get the general meaning of the text as a whole and this will help you with the rest of the question that requires you to take a more detailed look at the text.
2. You are not expected to read every word of the text. This will take too long and you don’t have time for this. In this kind of question you are only expected to understand the main idea of each paragraph. A good way to do this is to read the first one or two sentences and the last sentence of the paragraphs. You can also briefly look at the rest of the paragraph but you don’t have to read every word.
3. If there are words you don’t understand, don’t worry about this. Again, you should only worry about the general meaning of the paragraph as a whole, not individual words. Even native speakers will fail to understand every word in the IELTS reading test.
4. Be aware of synonyms. Many students look for words that match exactly with words in the text and ignore synonyms. For example, a keyword in the heading might be ‘Beautiful’, however the word you’re looking for could be many different synonyms of ‘beautiful’ like ‘attractive’,
‘pretty’, ‘lovely’ or ‘stunning’.
5. If there are two or three headings that are similar, write them beside the paragraph and try to find out the difference between the two headings. What are the keywords? How does this change the meaning? Which one matches the paragraph best?
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6. If you still can’t decide which one suits best, move on and come back to it later. The answer will normally be easier to find after you have matched some more headings.
7. Ignore anything you already know about the topic. You are being tested on the text only.
8. Don’t read too quickly. Some teachers advise that students should just ‘skim’ the text because you don’t have much time. In my experience, this leads to students not understanding most of the text and making mistakes. It is better to do this a little slower and actually understand what is in front of you.
9. Don’t panic if you know nothing about the general topic of the reading text. The IELTS reading test is not a knowledge test and you are not expected to have prior knowledge of the topic.
10. Don’t look at the headings first. This will automatically make you look for specific words in the text rather than the main idea. Remember it is your ability to find the main idea that is being tested, not your ability to find specific information. Instead of reading the headings first, ignore them and get the general meaning of each paragraph first by reading the first and last sentences.
Strategy
i. If this type of question is on the test, do it first.
ii. Don’t look at the headings.
iii. Read the first one or two sentences and the last sentence of each paragraph to understand the general meaning of the paragraph. Don’t worry about highlighting keywords in the test.
Try to sum up the general meaning of each paragraph in one or two words.
iv. Look at the headings and identify keywords within each heading.
v. Match any headings that are very obvious and you are sure about.
vi. For the others, write 2 or 3 headings beside the paragraph. Identify the difference between each of the headings. Establish if there are any synonyms in the paragraph to keywords in the headings.
vii. If you still can’t pick one, move one. The answer will often reveal itself later.
viii. Repeat until finished.
Practice
Let look at an example question. Below are two paragraphs from an article called ‘Trees in Trouble- What is causing the decline of the World’s giant forests?’
Match the two paragraphs with one of the following three headings:
1. How wildlife benefits from big trees
2. Factors that enable trees to grow to significant heights 3. How other plants can cause harm
‘Trees in Trouble- What is causing the decline of the World’s giant forests?’
Paragraph 1 - Big trees 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 Northern 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 lose your biggest trees.
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If you look at the above paragraphs you will see that they are full of difficult words like
‘bromeliads’, ‘basking’ and ‘stature’. If you try to read and understand every word you will get nowhere. Instead we just look at the first and the last sentences and with some highlighting of keywords and an awareness of synonyms it is apparent that the answers are:
Paragraph 1- How wildlife benefits from big trees
Paragraph 2- Factors that enable tree to grow to significant heights Exercise 1
Simplicity Reigns at London's Biggest Design Festival.
(A) With upwards of 300 product launches, installations and exhibitions, London's annual nine-day design festival is a showcase of head-spinning choice. In many ways that's the beauty of the extravaganza, everyone has a different experience and takes something unique away from it. There were however some intriguing themes and trends in this year's edition that spoke to larger social or cultural preoccupations.
(B) One was the launch of two consumer electronics products designed to simplify and beautify our technology-addled lives. Both chose the new London Design Festival venue of Somerset House to show their wares. The first was a mobile phone launched by Swiss company Punkt and designed by Jasper Morrison that allows users to make calls and texts only (well, it has an alarm clock and an address book too). Punkt founder Petter Neby doesn't believe it will replace your smart phone but suggests users fit it with the same SIM card as your main phone and use it in the evenings, weekends and on holiday.
(C) The other electronics launch came from the unlikely French sibling duo of the Bouroullec brothers.
Though tech companies like Samsung are usually prescriptive about their products the Bouroullecs (who admitted they found most TVs sad and ugly) seem to have been given free rein. Their new television for the mega Korean brand looks more like an item of furniture than an ultra-large and ultra- slim piece of tech. More importantly, it comes with simplified on-screen interaction and a 'curtain mode' that turns your screen into a shimmering pattern during ads or half-time. Again, their focus was on dialing down digital insanity.
(D) Customizable online furniture was also very much in vogue at this year's festival. But rest assured, weird and unreliable software or off-the-wall designs sent to a 3D printer somewhere and arriving months later, seem to be a thing of the past. Customization may finally have come of age. Two examples were Scandi-brand Hem that combinded good design by the likes of Luca Nichetto, Form Us With Love and Sylvain Willenz with affordable price points. The fact that the brand opened a pop-up store in Covent Garden during the festival is a recognition of the importance of both physical and online spaces that work seamlessly together.
(E) Another online configurable brand to make its debut after years in development was Warsaw- based Tylko. Like Hem, Tylko has spent time and money on very powerful and easy-to-use software, but with only three designs - a table, a shelf and salt and pepper mills - it has a way to go. Its augmented reality app is simple to use however and its table has been developed with a nano-coating option that really does appear to keep pesky stains at bay. Craft and 'making' in all its forms was once again a big hit and nowhere more so than at TENT, the East London design event that gets better every year.
(F) A definite highlight was the massive space taken over by the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland and filled with weavers and potters doing their thing and showing their wares. Irish Design had another
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delectable stand over at the Rochelle School in East London too. The Souvenir Project was a series of nine non-cliché 'souvenirs' made in Ireland and included a rainbow plate by Nicholas Mosse Pottery that featured rows of animals, flowers and watering cans and commemorated the legalization of same-sex marriage in Ireland in May 2015.
(G) If there was one material that could be said to define the festival it might just be Jesmonite, the wonder man-made building composite. Lighter and more sustainable than concrete, its dramatic capabilities were brought to life by London-based design studio PINCH and their tour-de-force limited edition Nim table and Swedish artist Hilda Hellström's giant colorful volcano made for the restaurant in London's Ace Hotel. A show called Matter of Stuff near Covent Garden was in on the jesmonite act too, but even more intriguingly was presenting vases made out of Propolis, a resinous material collected by bees and used to seal gaps in hives that, according to their designer Marlene Huissoud, behaves like glass.
(H) Finally, this was the year that Chinese Design finally displayed a well-edited and inspired showcase of products. Despite the mouthful of a title, Icon Presents: Hi Design Shanghai stand at 100% Design was a meaningful selection of designers exploring materials and ideas. Young design duo Yuue's offerings were the most representative of a new conceptual approach to design that seems to be emerging. Their lamps were functional but also thought-provoking and humorous. What more could one want from the stuff that surrounds us?
Questions 1-8
The text has eight paragraphs A-H. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.
1. Examples of customization 2. Unusual keepsakes
3. A new approach 4. A simple cell phone 5. Unbelievable material 6. A strange TV
7. Number of products shown on the festival 8. Three designs of a software
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Exercise 2
Match Headings Questions 1-5.
The reading passage has five paragraphs, A-E. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-E from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 1-5.
1 Paragraph A 2 Paragraph B 3 Paragraph C 4 Paragraph D 5 Paragraph E A
Despite its bad reputation, stress historically had a vital role to play. Commonly referred to as the
‘fight or flight’ mode, the sudden release of stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol causes the heart to beat faster, airways to dilate and blood vessels to open up, all of which push the body towards optimal performance and, ultimately, survival. In the rest of the animal kingdom, this is still often the difference between life and death. As he springs off to freedom, the lucky gazelle who escapes the lion can thank this primal evolutionary response.
B
In ordinary modern life, although we’re in little danger of being stalked by wild beasts down city streets, our bodies react to stress in the same ways. Experiencing anxiety, fear and stress is considered a normal part of life when it is occasional and temporary, such as feeling anxious and stressed before an exam or a job interview. It is when these acute reactions are prolonged or cannot be switched off, however, that serious physical, social and cognitive issues can result. In contrast to the normal everyday stress of modern life, chronic stress is a pathological state which can significantly interfere with daily living activities such as work, school and relationships, wreaking havoc on the body’s immune, metabolic and cardiovascular systems.
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Of major concern is the impact on the brain. Researchers have found that the hippocampus, the control centre of memory and our ability to learn, can physically shrink in response to prolonged release of stress hormones like cortisol which result from chronic stress. Neurons in this area do not just get smaller, but actually die, which weakens the neural connections, affecting the way memories are organised and stored in the brain. A chronically stressed person would recognise this as a ‘brain fog’, and it also has ramifications for other areas such as creativity and adaptability.
D
While this part of the brain gets smaller, another area, the amygdala, which is involved in processing emotions, can grow with chronic stress. Across species, a larger amygdala has been found to correlate with aggression and this, coupled with the weakened connection to the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s decision-making centre, can profoundly impact mood and behaviour. With the link between emotions and decision-making compromised, a person is much less able to stop and reflect, becoming instead reactive and short-fused. Think of the difference between being able to tolerate a screaming child and instead giving in to the desire to scream back.
E
In the past, it was accepted that there was a limited number of neurons in the brain and as they died off as a result of ageing, stress or substance abuse, for instance, they were lost forever. It turns out, however, that this is not the case and that stem cells within the brain are actually able to create new neurons. In other words, lost neurons can be replaced. What makes this discovery even more powerful is the fact that replenishing neurons is rather straightforward. One of the most powerful stimulants for neuron growth is physical activity. So, in addition to its role in the reduction of stress hormones in the first place, and its ability to stimulate the release of endorphins, exercise has now been shown to contribute to the repair of the chronically stressed brain.
Exercise 3
Libraries
A. The earliest libraries that we know about were different from present-day libraries, as their contents were mainly government records. Archaeological findings from ancient cities of Sumer revealed temple rooms full of records of commercial transactions, or inventories. Things were much the same in the government records of Ancient Egypt. The earliest private or personal libraries containing both non-fiction and fiction books appeared in classical Greece.
B. Library materials such as books, articles, and CDs are usually arranged in a certain order, according to a library classification system, so that you can find particular items quickly. In addition to public areas, some libraries have additional rooms where reference materials are stored. Often a professional librarian works from a reference desk or other central location, to help users find what they are looking for.
C. Many visitors to libraries do not know how to use the library effectively. This can be because they are shy and embarrassed to ask questions, or because they are not used to libraries. These problems were behind the library instruction movement in the US., which encourages library-user education. In fact, library instruction has been practised in the U.S. since the 19th century.
D. Managing a library involves tasks such as planning what new books to buy, designing classification systems, preserving materials (especially rare and fragile manuscripts) and developing library computer systems. Long-term tasks include planning library extensions and developing community services such as adult literacy programs.
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E. In North America, among other countries, libraries in poor communities are relatively expensive to run, but arguably less important to the community than essential services, such as police, firefighters, school, and health care. At any rate, many communities are beginning to feel they have no option but to close down, or reduce their library services to balance their budgets.
Questions 1-5
Match paragraphs A-E above with the headings i-vii. Some headings may not be used.
1. Paragraph A ...
2. Paragraph B ...
3. Paragraph C ...
4. Paragraph D ...
5. Paragraph E ...
Exercise 4
LESSONS FROM THE TITANIC
A From the comfort of our modern lives we tend to look back at the turn of the twentieth century as a dangerous time for sea travellers. With limited communication facilities, and shipping technology still in its infancy in the early nineteen hundreds, we consider ocean travel to have been a risky business. But to the people of the time it was one of the safest forms of transport. At the time of the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912, there had only been four lives lost in the previous forty years on passenger ships on the North Atlantic crossing. And the Titanic was confidently proclaimed to be unsinkable. She represented the pinnacle of technological advance at the time. Her builders, crew and passengers had no doubt that she was the finest ship ever built. But still she did sink on April 14, 1912, taking 1,517 of her passengers and crew with her.
B The RMS Titanic left Southampton for New York on April 10, 1912. On board were some of the richest and most famous people of the time who had paid large sums of money to sail on the first voyage of the most luxurious ship in the world. Imagine her placed on her end: she was larger at 269 metres than many of the tallest buildings of the day. And with nine decks, she was as high as an eleven storey building. The Titanic carried 329 first class, 285 second class and 710 third class passengers with 899 crew members, under the care of the very experienced Captain Edward J. Smith. She also carried