Matching headings asks one question per paragraph: what is this paragraph for? Not what it mentions — what it does. This lesson installs the first-and-last-sentence method, and dismantles the keyword-matching instinct that this question type is specifically engineered to punish.
Purpose, not topic
A paragraph's topic is what it talks about. Its main idea is what it says about that topic — the claim the paragraph exists to make. Headings test the second thing. That is why a paragraph about dolphins can have the heading "Doubts about early research methods": dolphins are the topic; the doubt is the point.
The heading list exploits candidates who match topics. For a paragraph whose point is early dolphin studies used flawed methods, expect to find distractor headings like "The intelligence of dolphins" or "How dolphins communicate" — full of words from the paragraph, describing sentences that are merely in it.
The rule: a heading must summarise what the whole paragraph argues. A heading that matches one detail, however exactly, is wrong — and the more exactly a heading's words match the paragraph's words, the more suspicious you should be.
This inverts your location training deliberately. In location discipline you hunt single sentences; here you compress whole paragraphs. Different question, different tool.
The first-and-last-sentence method
Most academic paragraphs put their main idea at one of two addresses: the first sentence (topic sentence, then support) or the last (build-up, then conclusion). So the default reading pattern for each paragraph is:
- Read the first sentence fully.
- Read the last sentence fully.
- Skim the middle for one thing only: a pivot. However, but, yet, in fact, the real reason — if a paragraph turns, the main idea lives after the turn, not before it.
- Compress the paragraph into 3–5 of your own words before you look back at the heading list. Something like "old methods were flawed" or "two competing explanations". This is the step people skip, and it is the step that defeats the distractors — you match your summary to a heading, instead of matching the paragraph's vocabulary to the headings' vocabulary.
If first + last + pivot leaves you genuinely unsure, read the middle. That is not failure; roughly one paragraph per set (often the longest) needs a full read. The method saves you from full-reading all eight.
Working the heading list
Before touching the passage, spend 90 seconds on the headings themselves:
- Read all of them. Underline the word in each that carries its meaning — usually an abstract noun: causes, comparison, criticism, solution, origins, consequences, an unexpected benefit.
- Notice near-pairs. Lists love including "Reasons for the decline" and "The decline reversed" — knowing the contrast exists sharpens your reading of the relevant paragraph.
Then work paragraph by paragraph, and manage the list as you go:
- Cross out used headings (unless instructions say headings may repeat — they almost never do here). Every elimination makes the next paragraph easier.
- There are more headings than paragraphs. Two or three are never used. So "it's the only one left that mentions farming" is weak evidence — the leftover heading may be a designed orphan.
- Skip the hard paragraph. If two headings both survive your summary test, mark both, move on, and return when eliminations have thinned the list. The last paragraph you judge is the easiest, because the list has shrunk.
- Do this question type first, before other questions on the same passage. It forces a structural skim of the whole passage that makes every later location faster — you now know which paragraph holds methods, which holds criticism, which holds numbers.
Worked micro-example
Paragraph (compressed): First sentence: The canal transformed the region's economy within a decade. Middle: freight statistics, new towns, employment figures. Last sentence: Yet this prosperity carried the seeds of the decline that followed, for the canal's success attracted the railways.
Heading options: (i) The economic benefits of canal transport — (ii) How railways were financed — (iii) A success that produced its own downfall.
Option (i) matches the topic and most of the vocabulary; it covers everything except the sentence that matters. The pivot yet hands the paragraph's point to the final sentence, and only (iii) summarises it. Option (ii) grabs the word railways — a one-detail trap. The correct answer, typically, shares the fewest words with the paragraph. Paraphrase pressure applies here just as it does everywhere else in this module — see paraphrase recognition.
Time and traps
| Trap | Defence |
|---|---|
| Heading repeats a phrase from the paragraph verbatim | Treat as a distractor until the whole paragraph supports it |
| Heading true of the passage overall, not this paragraph | Ask: could I defend this heading using only this paragraph? |
| Heading describes one example inside the paragraph | Your 3–5 word summary won't match it — trust the summary |
| Two paragraphs seem to fit one heading | One of them has a better heading elsewhere; resolve the other paragraph first |
Budget: this is a slow type — around 1.5 minutes per paragraph is acceptable within the 17/20/23 allocation because it pre-pays for faster location on the rest of the set.
Your drill
Twenty minutes.
- Open Reading 2026-01 Test 1 and find the matching-headings set. Before matching anything, write a 3–5 word summary next to every paragraph using first/last/pivot only.
- Now match your summaries — not the paragraphs — to the headings. Cross out as you go, skip deadlocks, return at the end.
- Check. For every miss, identify which trap from the table caught you, and find the sentence that should have generated your summary.
- Repeat with Reading 2026-03 Test 2 later this week, this time timed: 90 seconds per paragraph, summaries included.
When your summaries start matching the correct headings on the first pass, the question type is solved — you are no longer choosing between eight headings, you are recognising the one that says what you already wrote.