Reading & Writing: Exercise 4

(Summary writing)
Exercise 4 of ESL paper, is summary writing. A passage will be given,
on which you are required to write a summary.

What is a summary? The formal definition is: a brief statement or

account of the main points of something. And that’s exactly what you
have to do. Identify the main, relevant points and write them in your
own words in an organized manner.
This is the part of the paper I, personally, had the most trouble with. It is
not as easy as it looks. So, let’s get to it.

 Read the question properly.

What exactly do you have to write a summary on. In the question,
they could specify one or more detail. So you need to write the
summary on just those details. Leave out the rest.

w17_qp22. See the emboldened part? That”s what you have to

focus on.
 Read the passage.
As you go, underline the points that you need to include in your
 summary, that are relevant and important to the question.

 Write the summary.

That’s easier said than done. You have got all your points, now
you need to collate and organise it into one write-up using your
own words.

 Write a one-line introduction that tells the examiner what
you’re writing a summary on. Keep it short. In the
example above, you could start the summary by
 writing : Poon Lim, a ship-wreck victim, managed to
survive an astounding 133 days on an island all alone.

 Start organising the points. You could do it
chronologically, advantage-disadvantage format or
problem-solution format- whatever works for the task at
hand. In the example above, writing points in their
chronological order seems to be the right choice since it’s
a narrative type of article.

 Use connectives, lots of them, to organise your points and
add a sense of continuity. Some examples are:
Firstly/Secondly/Thirdly, In Addition/Also/Furthermore,
Consequently/As a result, Thus/Hence etc.

 Use your own words. Use synonyms of word in the
passage, if possible. In the example above, the phrase
‘invented ways to find food and water’ can be changed
to ‘came up with a system to obtain food and water’.

 You don’t have to write a conclusion. If the question
asked you to write the summary on the entire passage,
then maybe a conclusion would be fitting. But in questions
like the one above, it is irrelevant to the question.

 Stick to the word limit. For the extended paper you have
to write at least 100 word but not more than 120 words.
For the core paper you need to write at least 70 word but
not more than 80 words. Don’t write too much; scrap
unnecessary points not relevant to the question; cut short
words.