Part 4. Short talks on listening skills.

Listen to the short talk entitled "The inverted Pyramid in news reporting".

Some important words are taken away from the written passage, supply the missing words.

The inverted Pyramid in news reporting.

Broadcasting news in English has some particular characteristics, such as its style, its structure, the choice of words and the logical order of presentation, etc.

The standardized narrative procedure in news reporting is often called the inverted pyramid.

That is to say, the most important information is usually included in the news lead.

And a news lead, in a sense, is also a condensed form of a complete news story.

Each succeeding sentence becomes less significant providing further information on the who, what, where, when or how.

If we want to sum up a certain news item, we can take words from either inside or outside the news stories.

We can say, for example, this news item is about somebody's view on something, or it's about the relationship between country A and country B.

Other words such as comments, remarks, attitudes, analysis can also be very useful.

Apart from current news, radio reports on some breakthroughs on science and technology also help update our knowledge about the world.

However, vocabulary has proved to be a problem that often hinders our understanding of the new information.

Therefore, in order to enhance our ability in listening, words that frequently appear in some popular science programs should be carefully studied.

Besides, if we have a close examination of the experimental reports, we may find that they are often divided into different parts

or paragraphs on the subjects, the test or experiment procedures, the observations, the findings or results and so on.

This kind of knowledge also helps us in following the latest developments in science.