Headings, Highlights and the Word That Looks Right
Dóra is 18 and sits the emelt szintű (advanced) English reading paper in six weeks. In a timed practice she has 45 minutes for three tasks. On the first task - four paragraphs about urban beekeeping, five headings to match, one heading extra - she scores 2 out of 4. Her wrong choices share a pattern: for paragraph 2 she picks “Rooftop gardens are expensive” because the words cost and money appear twice, though the paragraph’s point is that insurance and written permission decide whether a hive is allowed. For paragraph 4 she picks “Bees are dying out” after seeing the phrase colony collapse, although that phrase appears inside a quoted objection that the writer then answers. She spends 14 minutes on this task, reaches the last task with 6 minutes left, and marks answers without underlining any evidence. Her teacher notes that she often says “I know the word” when asked why she chose an option.
1. Diagnose Dóra’s main reading problem and support the diagnosis with two pieces of evidence from the setup. Name one thing that is clearly not her main problem.
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Diagnosis: she is matching words to headings instead of matching a paragraph’s job to a heading. The task tests gist and function, and the distractors are deliberately built from repeated vocabulary.
Evidence 1: in paragraph 2, cost and money are supporting details inside a larger claim about insurance and permission. A heading must cover the whole paragraph, not its loudest noun.
Evidence 2: in paragraph 4, colony collapse sits inside a quoted objection the writer answers. A word inside reported speech tells you what someone else thinks, not what the paragraph is for.
Not her main problem: vocabulary knowledge. She recognises the words; she cannot yet say what the paragraph is doing with them. Time pressure is a symptom, not the cause: the 14 minutes were spent re-reading for words, not for structure.
2. Give a three-step procedure she can apply to each paragraph, plus a time budget for the 45-minute paper. Justify the budget rather than just stating it.
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Procedure per paragraph
- Read the heading set first and write beside each heading what kind of paragraph it would fit (cause, objection, practical rule, future plan). This turns five vague phrases into five predictions.
- Read the paragraph once and write a three-to-five-word summary in the margin before looking back at the headings. If she cannot summarise, she has not found the main point yet.
- Match the summary to a heading and then attack her own choice: which single sentence in the paragraph would the chosen heading not cover? If one exists, the heading is probably a distractor.
Time budget: 12 minutes for the matching task, 15 for the next, 15 for the last, 3 for transferring and checking. Justification: matching four paragraphs with five headings needs two passes, but it carries fewer items than the later tasks, so spending 14 minutes there buys marks at the worst possible exchange rate.
3. She says “I know the word.” Write the two questions you would ask her to turn word recognition into comprehension.
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Question 1 - function: “What job is this sentence doing here: example, objection, concession, or main claim?” This forces her to place the sentence in the paragraph’s argument. The colony collapse sentence is an objection, so no heading about dying bees can be the paragraph’s main idea.
Question 2 - deletion test: “If I deleted this sentence, would the paragraph still make the same point?” A detail can be deleted; the main point cannot. If deleting cost leaves the permission argument intact, then cost was never the heading.
Why these two: both convert a passive recognition response (“I know the word”) into an operation she can perform under exam pressure. Neither requires new vocabulary, which is why they fit her actual profile.