IELTS Reading: Matching Headings

Practise IELTS reading matching headings by understanding how paraphrasing will help you find the right answer. You will see there are two paragraphs but 6 possible headings. Read the headings first and then read the article to decide which heading is the right one for each paragraph. Don’t forget this is a practice lesson. In the real test, the passage will be much longer :) But try to use your skills and techniques in this lesson. 

Tips for Matching Headings 

  • Spend time paraphrasing the possible headings
  • Read the paragraphs to find the main idea
  • Distinguish between main ideas and extra information in the paragraph
  • Match main ideas not vocabulary
  • Not all headings will be used
  • Your answer must be a numeral (for example, i or v1) not words.

Matching Headings Practice

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A & B from the list of headings below. 
 

  • i. Temperatures on earth
  • ii. What is a greenhouse
  • iii. How is earth a greenhouse
  • iv. Plants that grow in a greenhouse
  • v. Earth’s atmosphere
  • vi. Why people have greenhouses

The greenhouse effect

  1.  A greenhouse is a house made of glass. It has glass walls and a glass roof. People grow tomatoes and flowers and other plants in them. A greenhouse stays warm inside, even during winter. Sunlight shines in and warms the plants and air inside. But the heat is trapped by the glass and cannot escape. So during the daylight hours, it gets warmer and warmer inside a greenhouse, and stays quite warm at night too. 
     
  2. .Earth’s atmosphere does the same thing as the greenhouse. Gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide do what the roof of a greenhouse does. During the day, the Sun shines through the atmosphere. Earth’s surface warms up in the sunlight. At night, Earth’s surface cools, releasing the heat back into the air. But some of the heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That is what keeps our Earth a warm and comfortable 59 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. 
     

Click below to reveal the answers.

Paragraph A = ii

Explanation:
The passage is about the greenhouse effect so the first paragraph explains the meaning of the word greenhouse. This is shown in the topic sentence and explained in the following sentences. The first paragraph does give information about plants in a greenhouse (iv) but this is only an example of how a greenhouse is used and not the aim of the paragraph.


Paragraph B = iii

Explanation
The second paragraph explains that earth functions the same way as a greenhouse due to gases in the atmosphere. This is shown in the topic sentence. There is information about the temperatures on earth (i) but only to explain the greenhouse effect. Also there is information about earth’s atmosphere (v) but only as it relates to the greenhouse effect.

 

The above article was taken from Wiki