Advanced English Reading and Comprehension

52 practice makes perfect Advanced English Reading and Comprehension

5. “In 2011, 60 family farmers, seed businesses, and organic agricultural organizations iled a
   lawsuit against Monsanto, turning the tables on a multinational giant that has been in the
   habit of bringing patent infringement suits against farmers. These plaintifs claimed that
   their crops had been contaminated by Monsanto’s seeds.”
   a. Family farmers, seed businesses, and organic agricultural organizations damaged
   Monsanto’s oices.
   b. Family farmers, seed businesses, and organic agricultural organizations did to Monsanto
   what Monsanto had been doing to them.

Reading strategies

To summarize a text, particularly one that is long and contains lots of facts and details,

it is necessary to diferentiate between essential details, which support the main idea, and

nonessential details, which the author has added for efect or interest’s sake. An example

of each type of detail follows:

ESSENTIAL DETAIL “[Borlaug’s] eforts led to the “Green Revolution,” which increased world

food production into the 1970s through the distribution of hybridized

seeds, the expansion of irrigation, the modernization of agricultural

management, the development of more eicient farm machinery, and

the introduction of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.”

NONESSENTIAL DETAIL Borlaug won a Nobel Prize for his research.

Imagine that you are an assistant to a political candidate who doesn’t have time to read

everything about genetically engineered food, but who has to decide whether to support it

or not in an election campaign. It is your job to review articles on the subject and provide the

candidate with only the most essential information. Remember that your candidate has to

think about a lot of other important issues, but he or she needs to be informed enough

to put forward a solid position on this issue.

4 · 10

EXERCISE

Essential and nonessential ideas and detailsIndicate which detail in each of

the following pairs of details from the reading text you consider essential (✓) and would

include in a summary, and which you would consider nonessential (X) and leave out.

1. Paragraph 2
   a. Farmers bred plants and animals with desirable traits to produce better ofspring.
   b. Gregor Mendel experimented with garden peas.


2. Paragraph 3
   a. Wheat and cereal grain hybrids were developed after World War II to increase food
   production.
   b. Nazareno Strampelli experimented with hybrids to reduce Italy’s dependency on
   grain imports.