Matching Viewpoint Questions
Tips and Tricks for Matching Viewpoint Question
- Questions may not be in order.
- Keep this question for your last task.
- Try to find names, place names and numbers in the questions. These are often easier to find in the text.
- Be aware that there may be synonyms. For example, you might see ‘34%‘ in the question but it might say ‘just over a third‘ or ‘about a third‘ in the text.
What is matching viewpoint question?
After a quick run through Tips and Tricks for Matching Viewpoint Question let’s understand what it is. An opinion/viewpoint is a statement that reflects a person’s individual viewpoint on a topic. Opinions or viewpoints are often based on facts, which is why some readers find it difficult to distinguish between fact and opinion. Also, most writers and speakers don’t put ‘I think’ in front of every opinion they give. This means that as a reader, you need to look for other words that help to indicate a personal opinion. IELTS reading assigns you to find the view point expressed in the passage.
Example
| Look at the following people and the list of opinions below. Match each person with the viewpoint that they express. 38 Libraries will no longer be physical places but will be accessed by computers in the future. 39 Libraries are more than just the books and other resources in them. 40 The Internet has changed what libraries are and how we perceive them. A The writer B Linda Evans |
Tips and Tricks for Matching Viewpoint Question
The Process
To understand the process let’s consider the following passage and a question.
| A One factor that always seems to occur in the demise of a language, according to theorist Hans-Jürgen Sasse of the University of Cologne in Germany, is that the speakers begin to have “collective doubts about the usefulness of language loyalty.” Once they start regarding their own language as inferior to the majority language, people stop using it for all situations. Kids pick up on the attitude and prefer the dominant language. “In many cases, people don’t notice until they suddenly realize that their kids never speak the language, even at home,” says Douglas H. Whalen of Yale University in the United States. This is how Cornish and some dialects of Scottish Gaelic slipped into extinction. B “Ultimately, the answer to the problem of language extinction is multilingualism,” Matisoff argues, and many linguists agree. Indeed, most people in the world speak more than one tongue, and in places such as Cameroon (279 languages), Papua New Guinea (823) and India (387) it is common to speak three or four distinct languages and a dialect or two as well. | Look at the following people and the list of viewpoints below. Match each person with the viewpoint that they express. A James Matisoff B Hans-Jürgen Sasse 1 Languages die when people view their own language as second rate. 2 People should speak more than one language so as to preserve their native tongue. |
Step by step Process
| Step 1 Read the question and underline the key words (name of the persons) | A James Matisoff B Hans-Jürgen Sasse |
| Step 2 Scan the passage for the name of the first person underlined as keywords. | B “Ultimately, the answer to the problem of language extinction is multilingualism,” Matisoff argues, and many linguists agree. Indeed, most people in the world speak more than one tongue, and in places such as Cameroon (279 languages), Papua New Guinea (823) and India (387) it is common to speak three or four distinct languages and a dialect or two as well. |
| Step 3 Read intensively to Understand the viewpoint expressed by that person. | Matisoff mainly talks about ‘multilingualism’, which means the ability to speak more than one language. |
| Step 3 Compare the viewpoint expressed by that person with the viewpoint expressed in the question to find the answer. | 1 Languages die when people view their own language as second rate. 2 People should speak more than one language so as to preserve their native tongue. The ideas expressed by Matisoff in the passage are the same as the viewpoint in Question 2. Therefore the answer to Question 2 is A . |