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you no longer know what he's talking about) backtrack a bit and try to find out where you got lost and what
new idea he introduced at that point (you may have missed it because it was in the middle of a paragraph, and
not at the beginning or end, where new ideas are most commonly introduced).
3. Reading through the closing section to see if you actually did understand the thesis in the opening section
(which, presumably, you were able to follow by glancing through the body of the text). The conclusion usually
refers back to the opening and confirms the thesis presented there, sometimes summarizing the important
material in the body of the text which was meant to support the thesis.
B. SCANNING
This involves glancing over the individual lines of the text, looking for specific pieces of information
(names, dates, subtitles, a key sentence introducing a specific idea you're particularly interested in, the place in
the text where one section ends and a new idea is introduced, etc.)
C. READING INTENSIVELY
Once you know which parts of the text contain the information you're particularly interested in, you can
concentrate
on reading those parts with special care, weighing each word to make sure that you haven't
misunderstood or missed anything the writer communicated either directly (explicitly) or indirectly (implicitly).
Look up the words you don't understand in a good dictionary. If you're not sure you understood exactly what
the writer means, go back to see if the preceding context is helpful. If that doesn't help, read ahead to see if
what follows clarifies for you.
Exercise:
The following list includes various kinds of texts. Decide which of the three strategies — or which
combination of them, and in what order — would be suitable for each:
1. a menu
2. a page in the dictionary
3. a road map
4. a diagram in a scientific article
5. an article in a scientific journal reporting on the research of someone in your field whose work you admire
6. an article in «Time» or «Newsweek»
7. a caption under a photograph
8. a page in the telephone book
9. an advertisement for something you're thinking of buying
10. a label on a food package
11. instructions for the use of a new appliance
12. the note included in the box of a prescription drug giving active ingredients, dosage, side effects, storage
instructions, etc.
13. a book on your course bibliography
14. a poem
15. a short story
16. a novel
17. a set of classroom notes borrowed from your friend before the final exam in a course you have seldom
attended
18. an article written by a professor whose course you're taking
UNIT 3. WHAT TITLES TELL US
Below is a list of text titles followed by a set of questions. Answer the questions by relating them to each of
the text titles on the list.
1. Why Computers Can't Be Poets
2. No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century
3. Crime and Poverty
4. Rethinking the Holocaust
5. Overcoming Unemployment