English Test Preparation

Grade 10 English HL Test Scope

Date: Friday March 4th
Time: 1 Hour
Marks: 35

Language in Context: 15 marks (comprehension questions)

Language Structures: 10 marks (phrases and clauses, figures of speech)
Written Summary: 10 Marks (paragraph structure 80-90 words)

Summary Writing

Summary writing is the process of shortening a long text by only highlighting the main ideas and
information of the text. The summary of a long text or a book gives the reader an idea of what
information is there in that long text or book. Every book has a small paragraph written on its
back, which is the summary of the book, providing an idea of the contents of the book.
Similarly, a summary is used in many places, including a person's work-life as well. Here, we will
discuss how to write a summary in detail.

Summarizing a Story!

A summary is considered as a brief write-up that is used for summing up the whole story in one
short paragraph. This short paragraph will contain all the main ideas and essential information
about the story. This paragraph is used to give a quick overview of the story or its gist. The
summary is responsible for informing the reader about the main points and the actual theme of
the story. By going through this write-up you will learn how to make a summary of a given
story.

The only objective of the summary is to save some valuable time for the reader by giving
him/her an instant short overview of what the whole story is all about. Despite being the
shorter version of the story, the summary will contain all the main ideas that will help a reader
understand what exactly is the story about.

How to Write a Summary?

Before attempting to write a summary, a student must have a basic understanding of it.
Without any knowledge, a student is incapable of creating a good summary that can give a
good overview. Summary writing seems easy, but it is not until you have understood all the
rules and regulations of writing a summary, that you can write one. To write a summary you
must follow the following predetermined steps.

 Read the Assigned Text or Story Carefully

 The best way to summarize a larger text or a story precisely is by understanding the text
of the story properly. For understanding a story correctly, a person has to read that
piece properly with full focus and sincerity. The reader must read the piece thoroughly
without skipping anything. The reader might need more than one reading to be
thorough on the piece assigned.

 Make Notes of Important Points

After reading the whole piece, the next step is to jot down the main points of the larger
text or the story for future reference. This is a crucial step in summarizing as the reader
has to identify the points which are important enough to be jotted down. Jotting down
points that are not important can affect the quality of the summary, and it is not
necessary also as we are not giving a detailed overview through a summary.

 Begin Writing Using Your Memory

After jotting down the main points, the next step is to elaborate and expand those
points. At this stage, it is suggested that students should elaborate on the points using
their memory that they have gained while reading the piece. This will ensure that
students will use their own words in the summary despite reading the words that are
there in the original piece, which are written by the author. Go through some summary
writing examples for Class 10 to get a better insight into it.

 Avoid Giving Personal Opinions

While summarizing a text or a story, one must avoid using his or her personal opinions
in.The summary must contain all the facts and figures that are in the assigned text or
the story. There should not be any alterations in the writings of the author. One should
not interpret the work and add his or her reviews in the summary since he or she is not
the critique for that work. One must simply summarize it without any changes.

 Review

The last step is to review and evaluate the summary that has been written to identify the
mistakes and rectify them to make the summary appropriate. The summary must be reviewed
thoroughly before submitting it. While doing the final edit of the summary, there are some
points to keep in mind which are as follows.

 If the assigned piece is a story, then one must ensure that the summary is written
following the correct chronological order of the facts as given in the story.

 One must ensure that a particular point is not repeated twice. Any repeated information
must get deleted during the review.

 The length of the summary must be short. A long summary defies the purpose of the
summary.

 Check for grammatical errors.

Summary Writing Format

The following summary format should be followed while summary writing in English.

 The introductory part

 A view on the main points of the story or text

 A conclusion on the whole part

Comprehension Summary

How to answer comprehension questions – Step-by-step

To teach you how to answer comprehension questions, we will first walk you through the
process and then we’ll work through an example with you.

The process we’ll look at is:

 Step 1: Read the questions

 Step 2: Unpack the questions
 Step 3: Read the text
 Step 4: Read for relevant information and techniques
 Step 5: Answer the questions – Mulitple choice, or
 Step 5: Answer the questions – written responses
o Identify and restate the keywords in the question
o Present your answer
o Incorporate your evidence
o Explain your example
o Conclude your response

Language

Language: Please refer to answers given via Whatsapp. You will only be asked language work
that we have covered as a class.