All the activities listed in the description of the Waystage objective (Chapter 1) may be carried out in direct oral contacts. Most of them, however, may also involve a confrontation with written texts or with spoken texts produced through media. In view of the similarity of the communication situations provided for in Threshold 1990 and in the present objective there is no reason to assume that there will be substantial differences between learners at either level as to the nature of the texts they are likely to need to be able to interpret or as to the kind of understanding that will be required. In both cases the learners will have to be able to ‘understand the gist and/or relevant details’ of texts relevant to the situations or topics involved in the specification of the objective. This means that, in both cases, they will have to be able to use such interpretation strategies as:

1. –distinguishing main points and secondary points

2. –distinguishing fact from comment

3. –identifying relevant information

4. –making use of clues such as titles, illustrations, paragraphing, and, in oral texts, structurally relevant pauses, tone of voice, etc.

In both cases, too, the texts to be understood will have to satisfy the following criteria:

1. –they have a clear structure, both conceptually and formally

2. –the relevant information contained in them is exclusively or mainly offered explicitly

3. –their understanding presupposes little or no familiarity with specific features of a foreign culture, other than ‘general European culture’

4. –they are produced in an easily accessible form.

No limitation is put on the kind of information to be understood from a text as defined above.