GERMAN ON THE WEB: Reading German
© Germanontheweb.com

 

 

 

ACTIVITY 1

Look at the following article. Reflect on your reading process.

Middle East summit set for Washington
summit

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has said a Middle East summit aimed at ending the stalemate in the peace process will begin in Washington on Thursday next week. Mrs. Albright was speaking after meeting the Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the border between Israel and the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip. She said there was a new spirit of cooperation and a sense of urgency, but there were still a lot of problems to be resolved.

 

a) What did you look at first, title, picture, or text?

b) Where did you find the most information?

c) Are title, picture, and text of equal importance to you?

 

and those afe the cheap seats
In this case, the article did not give you much more information than the title and the photo.
Different information carriers do not always give redundant information. Because the title and images can be interpreted most quickly, we usually look at these first to obtain the gist of an article before deciding whether we'd like to read it.

Photographs are often used to attract the reader's attention. Other visual aids, like diagrams, statistical tables, and graphs, can give additional information essential to understanding a text.