3 Identifying key points in a text
Texts at secondary level are often long and contain a lot of information. It can be quite difficult for students to stay focused when reading long texts like this, and it can be difficult for them to recall all the information. They therefore need to learn how to identify what is more important and what is less important when they are reading. They can do this by :
- underlining or highlighting key sentences, words or phrases.
- making notes of key information as they read.
Doing this helps students to stay focused on what they are reading, and it also helps them to understand it better.
Case Study 2: Mrs Shanta helps her students to identify what is important in a text
Mrs Shanta teaches English to Class IX. Her students have just had a test, and most of the class has not done very well. She decided to help them learn how to take notes so that they can recall information more easily for future tests.
The students wanted to know how to decide what is important. Jyoti mentioned that everything looked important when she read a chapter. I decided to do an activity to help them to identify what is important. I asked them to look at a passage about the film director Alfred Hitchcock in their textbook [Central Board of Secondary Education, 2011a]:
Alfred Hitchcock was a man with a vivid imagination, strong creative skills and a passion for life. With his unique style and God-gifted wit he produced and directed some of the most thrilling films that had the audience almost swooning with fright and falling off their seats with laughter.
Alfred Hitchcock was greatly influenced by American films and magazines. At the age of 20, he took up a job at the office of Paramount Studio, London. Using imagination, talent and dedication, he made each of his endeavours a success. He took great pleasure in working in the studio and often worked all seven days a week. He moved to the USA in 1939 and got his American citizenship in 1955. Here, he produced many more films and hosted a weekly television show. No matter from where his ideas came, whether a magazine article, a mystery novel or incident, his films had the typical ‘Hitchcock touch’ – where the agony of suspense was relieved by interludes of laughter! Hitchcock was knighted in 1980.
I asked them to read the passage silently first, in order to understand what it was about. Then I asked them to discuss it with the person next to them. After a few minutes the students started to put up their hands and said, ‘We think this passage is about someone called Alfred Hitchcock. It describes the kind of person he was and that he made films.’ Now I gave them some more instructions:
Together we highlighted the following points about Hitchcock.
Alfred Hitchcock was a man with a vivid imagination, strong creative skills and a passion for life. With his unique style and God-gifted wit he produced and directed some of the most thrilling films that had the audience almost swooning with fright and falling off their seats with laughter.
Alfred Hitchcock was greatly influenced by American films and magazines. At the age of 20, he took up a job at the office of Paramount Studio, London. Using imagination, talent and dedication, he made each of his endeavours a success. He took great pleasure in working in the studio and often worked all seven days a week. He moved to the USA in 1939 and got his American citizenship in 1955. Here, he produced many more films and hosted a weekly television show. No matter from where his ideas came, whether a magazine article, a mystery novel or incident, his films had the typical ‘Hitchcock touch’ – where the agony of suspense was relieved by interludes of laughter! Hitchcock was knighted in 1980.
The students then wrote their key points in the notebooks:
- Vivid imagination, strong creative skills, passion for life
- Unique style, God-gifted wit
- Produced/directed thrilling films
- Greatly influenced by American films and magazines
- Age 20 job Paramount Studio, London
- Great pleasure working – worked all seven days a week
- Moved to USA 1939; American citizenship 1955
- Produced more films, hosted weekly TV shows
- Ideas from – magazine articles, mystery novel, incident
- Films – typical ‘Hitchcock touch’ – agony of suspense, interludes of laughter
- Knighted 1980
In the next class, I asked students to look back at the notes they had made about Hitchcock and asked if they could recall the main ideas of the passage. If they could, then they knew that they had made good notes. I told them that now they had learned the route for their studies.
Activity 3: Try in the classroom – Identifying what is important
In Case Study 2, the teacher showed her class how to pick out the main ideas in a text and leave out the non-essential details. Now follow the steps below and try a similar activity in your classroom:
- Before class, select a biography or other factual text from your textbook or supplementary reader.
- In class, give your students some time to read the text silently.
- Organise your students into pairs. Each pair must pick out the main ideas from the text by underlining the key points, and then writing them on paper. Give them a time limit to do this; for example, five to ten minutes, depending on the length and complexity of the text.
- Ask a few pairs to read out their main points. The rest of the class should comment on whether all the main points have been identified or any essential information has been left out or if non-essential information has been included.
You can begin by working with just one or two paragraphs. As the students gain confidence, you can get them to work with longer pieces.
 Pause for thought Here are some questions for you to think about after trying this activity. If possible, discuss these questions with a colleague.
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Good note-taking skills will be useful for your students in the future. If they go on to higher education, they will need to take notes in lectures or from academic articles or books. In the workplace or in training they may need to note down instructions.
Notes made while reading can be very useful, too – for example, as revision aids before an exam, when writing a report and so on. For notes to be useful, they need to be clearly written and easy to find. Apart from helping your students to identify what is more or most important, you can show them ways of taking, keeping and using notes effectively.
Activity 4: Reconstructing a text from notes
This activity is for pairs, but may also be adapted for groups of four. It will help your students to develop the skills of choosing and noting what is important.
- Before class, select two short passages from the textbook or a brief report from a newspaper or other English text. If possible, you could also ask students to bring in a text from home (for example from a newspaper).
- Next organise your students into pairs. Give one member of the pair one text (Text 1), and the other member of the pair the second text (Text 2). It doesn’t matter if students all have different texts. You could give more challenging texts to students who are more confident with reading and simpler texts to those who are less confident. (See Resource 2 for further guidance on pair work.)
- Tell students to read their given texts and to make notes about the most important points on a piece of paper or in their notebooks. Give students a sufficient amount of time to complete the task, and walk around the pairs as they work. Help students if they are having problems.
- When the time is up, tell students to exchange their notes. Each person in the pair should now have their partner’s notes.
- Each student should now try to write the passage using just the notes. Again, give a time limit and ask students to write as much as they possibly can. Some students may not have finished – this is OK.
- Tell students to read each other’s written passages and compare them to the original passages. Ask them to discuss whether important information has been included, or whether any information is missing.
Pause for thought Here are some questions for you to think about after trying this activity. If possible, discuss these questions with a colleague.
Typically this kind of activity is easier with factual texts, as it is easier to pick out the main points and facts. Literary texts can be harder, because readers will have different ideas about what the main points are. It can be interesting to try the activities with different kinds of text, and discuss what your students think. You can do these kinds of activities with the lessons from the textbook or supplementary reader. This way, students are working with texts that they need to study. Using them regularly means that your students will get better and quicker at doing them. |
2 Using existing knowledge to make sense of an English text