Identifying where to find information

· Step 1. Survey introductory and concluding paragraphs, and identify the core ideas of the passage.

· Step 2. Skim the rest of the passage to make sure.

· Step 3. Scan the text to find the correct wording of its main idea, the topic, and the purpose, write out the key words from each paragraph.

· Step 4. Skim the text for examples of descriptions, step-by-step explanations, directions, comparisons and contrasts, analyses, analogies, and definitions.

a/ The main idea is what the author has in mind when s/he is writing a text. Which one of the sentences given below most closely renders the main idea of the text?

1. Receptive Multilingualism activates understanding processes in intercultural and interlingual interactions in which the participants use different languages/varieties as speakers or as listeners.

2. LaRa has become an accepted mode of communication.

3. Creative verbal elements within LaRa result from receptive multilingual discourse.

4. LaRa has a potential for solving communicative problems both by overcoming ideological asymmetries and establishing discursive interculture(s).

5. LaRa enhances the idea of cultural and linguistic diversity and helps immigrants be integrated into 'dominant' society.

b/ The topic is the subject area the author chooses to bring her/his idea to the reader. Identify the main topic of the text.

1. Alternation as a form of codeswitching.

2. Comparison of LaRa to other multilingual modes.

3. The intercultural communicative situation.

4. Receptive multilingual discourse.

5.Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication.

c/ The purpose of the text is what the author wants the reader to believe in. Does the writer want you to believe that:

1. Turkish immigrants in Germany use insertional codeswitching?

2. LaRa promotes the idea of cultural and linguistic diversity by addressing two languages simultaneously?

3. Codeswitching is common in many bi- and multilingual communities the world over?

4. The two main forms of codeswitching are insertion and alternation?

5. In LaRa speakers apply additional competencies, or repertoires, in order to monitor the way hearers activate their 'passive knowledge' and understanding?