Summary implies the shortened form of a passage or restating the main idea or points in a given passage in a concise manner.
It may appear a difficult task at first but once you master the technique of writing a good summary, you are open to a number of advantages. Summary writing gives you the ability to transmit ideas orally where you have limited time within which to reproduce some points contained in an original speech. It also helps you to narrate the contents of a letter or an essay or report or book within limited time and paper. What is more? Obviously, your ability to write a good summary earns you profitable dividend by way of marks in your examination. Why then don’t you consider some steps in writing it.
The world of books is filled with innumerable treaties of Hows and Don’ts on summary writing. Some of them invariably confuse rather than help the student. While one cannot doubt the fact that an author, for example, means well when he outlines as many as 30 steps to a “good précis”, it is the believe of the author that such steps are so many that they can only be mastered within about half a decade! Hence the need for a concise, but synthetic approach such as the following steps below:
1. Read the whole passage as fast as possible so as to understand what it is all about.
2. Then, read the questions so that you may know what is expected of you.
3. Then, read the portion that you are asked to summarise much more gradually, noting the reasons or points you are asked to summarise.
4. Then, write out the summary of the reasons, points or ideas as demanded by the question.
5. Correct all mistakes of grammar after you have removed all unnecessary materials or repetitions.
6. If there are still other summaries to be made of special parts of the given passage then do so one after the other bearing in mind that a summary based upon your own understanding is much better than one which is made u of selections of sentences from the main passage.
Now, you are free to take a look at the few of the model questions and answers on summary below:
1. MODEL SUMMARY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 1
2. MODEL SUMMARY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 2
3. MODEL SUMMARY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 3
4. MODEL SUMMARY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 4
5. MODEL SUMMARY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 5
