Reading B – Assigning titles to paragraphs/articles

A common question type in Reading B is one where you asked “What is the most appropriate title for this paragraph?” or “What would make a suitable title for this article?”. It is useful to consider how best to answer these questions. The general principle that works for questions like this is to ask yourself “Which title covers everything in the paragraph, but is as narrow as possible?”. This principle might seem contradictory at first – how can a title cover everything, but be narrow? However, we will consider an example to illustrate the principle at work.

Example 1

Alcoholic cirrhosis is the most common cause of hepatic cancer in Australia, accounting for approximately 60% of diagnoses, closely followed by hepatitis B virus, which is responsible for an additional one fifth of these patients. Other, less common, aetiologies include other viral hepatitides, hepatitis of non-infectious causes, aflatoxin exposure, haemochromatosis, Wilson’s disease, Type 2 diabetes and haemophilia.

Which of the following titles is most appropriate for this paragraph?
A) Complications of alcoholic cirrhosis
B) Risk factors for hepatic cancer
C) Alcoholic cirrhosis in the aetiology of hepatitis B
D) Causes of hepatic illness

At first glance, answer A looks like it could fit – the text talks about alcoholic cirrhosis leading to the complication of hepatic cancer. However, this title only really applies to the first sentence, and the rest of the paragraph has no relevance to alcoholic cirrhosis. Similarly, answer C is incorrect because it only considers terms in the first sentence, and is also incorrect as the paragraph considers alcoholic cirrhosis and hepatitis B in the aetiology of hepatic cancer. Both B and D do fit the whole paragraph, but the most appropriate title of these two will be the one that is most narrow. The article doesn’t talk about hepatic illness in general, but instead focuses on hepatic cancer – D is too broad, where B fits the paragraph perfectly.

The same principle can be applied to questions asking you to give a title to the whole article – make sure that your title choice can be applied to any given paragraph in the article. Unlike Reading A, in Reading B you have a bit more time to read and process the text to get a general feel for the information in the article, and this can help your choice of a title.