- +79055367864
- США, Штат Нью Йорк.
- tcb1786@yahoo.com
- info@englishyou.ru
- What's up: +13157511678. , Telegram: Marianna Bradley. +13157511678.
Learn English with confidence
Prose Summary Questions- TOEFL Reading
The Prose Summary questions are made to show that you recognize the major ideas and the relative importance of information in a reading passage.
Steps:
1. Look carefully at the instructions. Let’s take them in parts:
An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below…”
For Exmaple: Several factors led to the developments that resulted in the Haymarket Riot
Here we need to make sure that every answer that we choose is a factor that led to the Haymarket Riot. Any answer choice that is not a factor,even though it may be true, should not be considered.
2. Another thing to keep in mind is that if a question asks you to choose the causes of some event or process, you need to make a clear distinction between causes and effects.Choosing an effect or consequence of an event or process when asked about a cause is a common error and should be avoided.
Some answer choices do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented…”
If the idea is not included in the reading, do not choose it.
One of the most difficult tasks is identifiying the distinction between major and minor ideas. If the answer is an effective summary of one or more paragraphs in the text, then clearly we are dealing with a major idea that must be considered. However, if the answer is an idea or detail that is not developed within the text, and is only briefly mentioned, it most likely is a minor idea despite the fact that it is true. Typically minor ideas can be biographical or geographical details about a person or thing that do not explain their significance.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Chart 3: Graphic Organizer- Main idea chart
- Topic
- Main Idea
- Supporting Detail
- Supporting Detail
- Supporting Detail
- Supporting Detail
_______________________________________________________________________
Sample
DEER POPULATIONS OF THE PUGET SOUND
Two species of deer have been prevalent in the Puget Sound area of Washington state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The black-tailed deer, a lowland, west-side cousin of the mule deer of eastern Washington, is now the most common. The other species, the Columbian white-tailed deer, in earlier times was common in the open prairie country; it is now restricted to the low, marshy islands and flood plains along the lower Columbia River.
Nearly any kind of plant of the forest understory can be part of a deer’s diet. Where the forest inhibits the growth of grass and other meadow plants, the black-tailed deer browses on huckleberry, salal, dogwood, and almost any other shrub or herb. But this is fair-weather feeding. What keeps the black-tailed deer alive in the harsher seasons of plant decay and dormancy? One compensation for not hibernating is the built-in urge to migrate. Deer may move from high-elevation browse areas in summer down to the lowland areas in late fall. Even with snow on the ground, the high bushy understory is exposed; also snow and wind bring down leafy branches of cedar, hemlock, red alder, and other arboreal fodder.
The numbers of deer have fluctuated markedly since the entry of Europeans into Puget Sound country. The early explorers and settlers told of abundant deer in the early 1800s and yet almost in the same breath bemoaned the lack of this succulent game animal. Famous explorers of the North American frontier, Lewis and Clark arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River on November 14, 1805, in nearly starved circumstances. They had experienced great difficulty finding game west of the Rockies and not until the second of December did they kill their first elk. To keep 40 people alive that winter, they consumed approximately 150 elk and 20 deer. And when game moved out of the lowlands in early spring, the expedition decided to return east rather than face possible starvation. Later on in the early years of the nineteenth century, when Fort Vancouver became the headquarters for the Hudson’s Bay Company, deer populations continued to fluctuate. David Douglas, Scottish botanical explorer of the 1830s, found a disturbing change in the animal life around the fort during the period between his first visit in 1825 and his final contact with the fort in 1832. A recent Douglas biographer states: “The deer which once picturesquely dotted the meadows around the fort were gone [in 1832], hunted to extermination in order to protect the crops.”
Reduction in numbers of game should have boded ill for their survival in later times. A worsening of the plight of deer was to be expected as settlers encroached on the land, logging, burning, and clearing, eventually replacing a wilderness landscape with roads, cities, towns, and factories. No doubt the numbers of deer declined still further. Recall the fate of the Columbian white-tailed deer, now in a protected status. But for the black-tailed deer, human pressure has had just the opposite effect. Wildlife zoologist Helmut Buechner (1953), in reviewing the nature of biotic changes in Washington through recorded time, says that “since the early 1940s, the state has had more deer than at any other time in its history, the winter population fluctuating around approximately 320,000 deer (mule and black-tailed deer), which will yield about 65,000 of either sex and any age annually for an indefinite period.”
The causes of this population rebound are consequences of other human actions. First, the major predators of deer—wolves, cougar, and lynx—have been greatly reduced in numbers. Second, conservation has been insured by limiting times for and types of hunting. But the most profound reason for the restoration of high population numbers has been the fate of the forests. Great tracts of lowland country deforested by logging, fire, or both have become ideal feeding grounds for deer. In addition to finding an increase of suitable browse, like huckleberry and vine maple, Arthur Einarsen, longtime game biologist in the Pacific Northwest, found quality of browse in the open areas to be substantially more nutritive. The protein content of shade-grown vegetation, for example, was much lower than that for plants grown in clearings.
14. Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage.
Write your answer choices in the spaces where they belong. You can either write the letter of your answer choice or you can copy the sentence.
Deer in the Puget Sound area eat a wide variety of foods and migrate seasonally to find food
9 Reading Answer Choices
- A The balance of deer species in the Puget Sound region has changed over time, with the Columbian white-tailed deer now outnumbering other types of deer.
- B Because Puget Sound deer migrate, it was and still remains difficult to determine accurately how many deer are living at any one time in the western United States.
- C Deer populations naturally fluctuate, but early settlers in the Puget Sound environment caused an overall decline in the deer populations of the area at that time.
- D Although it was believed that human settlement of the American West would cause the total number of deer to decrease permanently, the opposite has actually occurred for certain types of deer.
- E In the long term, black-tailed deer in the Puget Sound area have benefitted from human activities through the elimination of their natural predators, and more and better food in deforested areas.
- F Wildlife biologists have long been concerned that the loss of forests may create nutritional deficiencies for deer.
Topic: Deer in the Puget Sound area
Main Idea - Deer in the Puget Sound area migrate seasonally to find food.
Supporting Detail - decline in the deer populations
Supporting Detail - Although it was believed that human settlement of the American West would cause the total number of deer to decrease permanently, the opposite has actually occurred for certain types of deer.
Supporting Detail - In the long term, black-tailed deer in the Puget Sound area have benefitted from human activities through the elimination of their natural predators, and more and better food in deforested areas.
Полезный материал на все разделы TOEFL
В данном разделе представлен полезный материал по всем разделам экзамена TOEFL: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing,