Why Do I need Minor Details?

Our ideas are typically structured as a main idea which is supported by major details. The major details are often the reasons, explanations, and points that the speaker makes. This information is usually the minimum requirement for understanding. If I'm going to complete a task based on the listening, I at least need to know the most important information the speaker shared.

Speakers often state the main idea near the beginning of their speaking and then repeat it multiple times. Listen for the verbal signposts on the left of the chart to help you identify main ideas. Use them when speaking to show others your main point.

Speakers often introduce important minor details, like explanation, descriptions, or examples with patterned words or phrases. Listen for the words or phrases on the left to help you discern important supporting details. Sometimes, the same word will start each sentence with an important detail.

Example

Below is an example of a listening task. Watch the short video and answer the first question.

Geography Video

This activity is intended to practice your listening skills, so no transcript is provided. If you are d/Deaf or hard of hearing, you may either choose to skip this video or use the auto-generated captions .

Watch the video.

What is the main idea and the two supporting details?

Main Idea and Major Details

Main Idea: Most countries have borders with other countries, but a few only have one neighboring country.

Major Detail 1: Some countries are surrounded by another country.

Major Detail 2: Some countries only have one neighbor nation but can be accessed by the ocean.

If you only understood and remembered this information from the video, you would most likely be able to participate in a conversation about this general topic with some success.

However, there are times when you would be expected to remember more specific information after the speaker finishes. In fact, it's likely you remember some of that specific information even though you weren't asked to focus on it. Before you click on the next tab, think about what specific information you remember from the video without specifically trying to understand the minor details.

You are welcome to watch the video again before clicking to see the minor details.

Minor Details

Main Idea: Most countries have borders with other countries, but a few only have one neighboring country.

Major Detail 1: Some countries are surrounded by another country.

Minor Details: Vatican City and San Marino are both surrounded by Italy.

Lesotho is surrounded by South Africa.

It is also the largest and most populated encircled city.

Major Detail 2: Some countries only have one neighbor nation but can be accessed by the ocean.

Minor Details: Portugal, Monaco, Qatar, Denmark, and South Korea are all examples of countries with only one country on their land border.

Additionally, you have examples like Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Brunei, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Ireland, and the United Kingdom also only have one land-bordering nation.

Canada is the largest single-neighbor nation.

In the main idea, we have the general concept of country borders. The major details narrow that concept down by giving two explanations of what types of countries we are discussing. The minor details get even more specific by giving the listener some examples of countries with these types of borders. By the time the speaker is finished, the hope is that they totally understand the idea of single-nation borders and should probably be able to recall a couple of specific examples.

What Minor Details Should I Listen For?

This brings us to the big question of what to do as a listener. If the minor details are sometimes very important and sometimes not important at all, how do you know when to pay attention to them and what you should be listening for?

First of all, you need to think about your purpose as a listener. Is there a specific task you will need to accomplish after listening? Some examples of tasks are as follows:

• Participate in a discussion on the topic
• Share your opinion
• Answer quiz questions (multiple choice, fill in the blank types)
• Give a summary (either oral or written)

Knowing what you are expected to do after listening can help you decide what minor details would be most relevant based on your goal. For example, sharing my opinion will require me to listen for things I agree or disagree with and the specific details that I think were strongest in developing my opinion.

Combining an understanding of your purpose and the speaker's purpose makes it very clear what minor details will be most important to understand and remember.

Let's look at an example from the previous section to explore this:

Explaining: Minor details are usually the most important for this purpose. For example, if the speaker is explaining a historical sequence of events, the names, places, and dates are important for understanding context.

Now, this situation would signal that there will be a lot of minor details. In order to listen for the minor details you really need, consider your task after listening. Here are two examples of how listening for minor details could look very different, even when the information and the speaker's purpose are the same.

Watching a documentary with friends: In this situation, it is very unlikely that your friends would expect you to remember dates and places. You can rely on the major details to help you talk about the documentary afterward. Names of people or events would be important to listen for to help you clearly state your thoughts about the documentary.

Quiz for university course: You need to understand and remember as many minor details as possible. At this point, there is no clear way to know what information will be on the quiz. You will need to have a note taking strategy to support your listening for specific details. Using your textbook, the professor's powerpoint slides, office hours, and asking the Teaching Assistant for help are great ways to reinforce your listening. You can also talk to your professor to get permission to record lectures to listen to later to check understanding.

Using the Purpose to Recognize Minor Details

In order to talk about why you would need to listen for minor details, let's review what we discuss in the lesson Listening Strategy: Speaker's Purpose.

• Explaining - Simple exchange of information
  • A description
  • A process
  • A sequence of events
  • A comparison
• Persuading - Trying to convince the person listening that something is true
  • Presenting only your opinion
  • Contrasting with an opposite opinion
  • Selling a product
• Entertaining - Keeping attention and making the topic interesting and fun
  • Encouraging an emotional reaction to what you say

Now, depending on the purpose, you should have a clue for how important the minor details would be to a speaker.

• Explaining: Minor details are usually the most important for this purpose. For example, if the speaker is explaining a historical sequence of events, the names, places, and dates are important for understanding context.
• Persuading: The importance of minor details here depends on the situation. For example, the minor details about a new product like battery life, price, new features, easy use, etc might be more important for one audience than for another. A good salesperson is very aware of the audience and will know when that information is helpful in persuading or overwhelming and unnecessary.
• Entertaining: Minor details are very common in this setting, but often not very important. If someone is telling you about a joke they heard from a comedian, they will most likely not include or forget the specific context of the joke or details that made the original funny. However, the simplified joke can still be entertaining and serve the purpose.
  

Minor Detail Signposts

In that example, we explored how the speech was structured generally and the information used to support that organization.

When we introduced the idea of major details, we compared it to constructing a building. The main idea tells us that the building will be a house, the major details inform us of the size and placement of rooms. The minor details get more specific by telling us what each room needs. How do you recognize which room is a bedroom? It can just be labeled bedroom, but seeing specific details like a closet or windows, or something even more specific like a bed or other furniture would make the idea of a bedroom very clear.

Exercise 2: Listen for minor details 2

This activity is intended to practice your listening skills, so no transcript is provided. If you are d/Deaf or hard of hearing, you may either choose to skip this video or use the auto-generated captions .

Watch the video and prepare for a discussion question about the topic.

Listening Task

Here is your discussion question:

The video introduces this equation. Be prepared to explain this idea to a partner and give some specific examples of what your community can do to prepare for disasters.

Answer Task

Strategy:

A discussion does not usually require the same level of detail has a quiz. The discussion question is primarily a main idea question. All of the information in the video supports the idea in this formula that we can reduce the risk of these increasingly frequent hazards by preparing. One of the major details is why the hazards are more frequent. The other major detail is how to prepare a community effectively.

Therefore, you can focus on listening for those two major details and understanding the minor details that are of highest interest for you. Some minor details that could help you prepare for the discussion:

Increasing frequency: How is climate change impacting the hazards most common in your area?

Main causes for destruction: Poorly designed buildings are one of the major causes of a disaster. How can your community respond to this?

Disaster proof school buildings: What hazards does your community face? How could the schools be built to keep children safe?

Educate children: What do students need to learn to keep them safe from the hazards common to your area? How can schools teach this?

Making plans: What type of plans should children know to keep them safe in these situations?

If you understood and remembered at least one of these minor details, you would be able to prepare ideas for specific application of the information in your community that you can share in the discussion.

Exercise 3: Video summary

Watch the video below before class. Take notes about the story. 

1. Your teacher will put you in a breakout room with a partner. Work together to make an outline of the story.
   • What is the main idea? What did the story makers want you to think or feel with the story?
   • What are the three most important details?
   • For each of those three major details, think of three minor details that emphasize the bigger ideas.
2. You and your partner should have 7 sentences by the time you finish this activity.

Group Activity — Listening with a Purpose