Organization of Ideas

When you read a news article, do you read the first paragraph (also called the “lead”) first or do you read the last paragraph of the article first? I think it is safe to say that almost everyone reads the lead first before the other paragraphs in the news article. If ever there are cases where the person reads the last paragraph first, the question is, “Why?”.

News articles are structured in a way that the readers would be able to grasp the gist of the news right away even if they don’t have enough time to read the whole article. The most important pieces of information are already in the first two paragraphs of the article. So, if the readers are in a hurry, they can still understand the main idea and get the most important information about the article. If we could only air our thoughts the same way, the people we’re talking to would understand us more easily. Also, they would not get bored with our responses.^^

What are the common problems about organizing ideas when responding to questions?

Novelist Speakers

What in the world is a novelist speaker? They are the people who tend to talk so much in response to a very simple question. They have a tendency to digress from the topic and even forget what the original question was.

Repeat Again

Have you ever heard someone tell you ,” Sorry, I don’t understand the question. Can you repeat again please?” If you weren’t able to identify what’s wrong with the latter sentence, you probably have the same problem. The word “again” is the same as “repeat”, so it’s redundant to say “repeat again”. Now, the problem with some speakers is that they repeat not only the words, but also the content of their responses. At times, they have a very long response but the content is just the same as what they’ve already said before.

Story-teller Style

In some stories, you have to read the whole story first before you understand the lesson. It is the same with some speakers. It’s very hard for them to go straight to the point. You have to wait for them to finish speaking (in some cases, very long speeches^^) before you can finally understand what he’s trying to say. Many people don’t have time to listen to everything you will say, so say the most important things first. Say the main idea first before elaborating on reasons and giving examples.

Disoriented

At times, we encounter people who would talk about topic A and go to topic B and then go back to topic A and afterwards move to topic C. They have no focus of what they would like to talk about, so the people they talk to get dizzy talking to them.^^ Try to talk about topic A first and try to finish everything you have to say about it before moving on to another topic.

For Other Factors Affecting English Speaking Skills Click Here