SUMMARY WRITING

A summary, also called a precise, is a concise, clear, logical and readable representation of a longer passage.

It requires the use of the minimum number of words to convey a maximum amount of thought, brevity is a necessary quality of a summary but more importantly is clarity.

The purpose of a summary of precise, is to present the salient points of a given passage in a more concise form so that the essential ideas are easily and quickly understood in this respect, the precise is primarily a test of comprehension, which leads to an exercise in expression and style.

There are several ways of writing summaries and each student must develop the technique that best suits him or her. There is no precise formula for writing summaries, the steps below are merely suggestion to assist the student to get started.

a.     Read the passage once or twice over, for a thorough understanding.

b.     Read the questions based on the passage.

c.      Read the passage once again, making notes, or jotting down points that will help you answer the questions.

d.     Write out your own answers, to be able to write a good answer, you should observe the clues, visual and verbal, which indicate the organization of thought, the main ideas and important details, underline key words and concept with a view to drop some concepts which maybe irrelevant or repetitive.

e.      Write out the main idea or ideas

                   i.      Outline the material

                 ii.      Assume that each paragraph contains a main idea and write a summary sentence for each.

              iii.      Make rough notes of the main ideas of the passage.

f.       Using your notes or outline, ask yourself; what does this passage say? Repeat to yourself the contents of the article. This will help you to discover if you really have understand the passage.

g.     Write out the final copy, then read over the questions and your answers to ensure that there is no error.

Useful Hints In Summary Writing

a.     When writing summaries, always indicate which part of the question you are answering since the order of your answer may not correspond to that of the questions.

b.     Pick from the passage only the information demanded by the questions; do not attempt to give your own additional information, even if you know more about the topic discussed.

c.      Keep strictly to the contents of the passage and do not try to correct any piece of information given in the passage.

d.     Avoid repetition, illustrations, wordy comparison and poor expression.

e.      As much as possible, use your own words in presenting your answers. If for any reason you have to lift, or borrow words of phrases used in the passage, do it sensibly. Do not copy out whole paragraphs from the passage in answer to summary questions.

f.       Be as brief as possible, but do not give phrases and clauses when sentences are required.

g.     Make sure that the meaning whatever you have written is not ambiguous.

h.     Make sure that you do not write more than the required number of words, sentences of paragraphs.