Summary_Guideline

Objective of summary writing:

summary writing is not a writing skill. It is largely a reading skill (you are required to select relevant information in the text and list down all the imporstant points in one paragraph)

Guidelines for summary writing:

1. Read the question carefully. Ask yourself: “What am I required to summarise”.
Ask (what, when, where, why, who, whose, how) ?
Look for verbs like(identify, find, list).

2. Mark the first and last lines of the passage you are asked to refer to.

3. Then select information that is relevant to your answer. To do this, underline the relevant
lines or ideas as you read the text. Always ask yourself: “Is this??”

4. Look through the lines/ideas you have underlined. Do not include information not in
the ,such as,your own ideas or opinions.

5. Summarise these ideas, using condensation, reorganisation or paraphrasing skills.

6. If you cannot paraphrase ideas, see if there are words in the text that you can replace.

7. Begin the summary with the 10 words given and remember that the three dots after the
word mean you have to complete the sentence with some relevant information from the text...

8. Organise the ideas/points in the manner in which they are found in the text.Do not repeat
ideas,such as, similar ideas from other lines in the text.

9. Adhere to the word limit. Writing more than the required number of words will not get you
any marks. Anything far too short of the word limit means you lack content.

10. Pay attention to the tense (and sometimes pronoun) used in the given 10 words.

11. Write the summary in one paragraph.