English Second Language·Writing skills · NSSCO 5.10
Summary writing & note form
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How do you take a long piece of writing and give only its main ideas, briefly, in your own words? That is summarising — a skill the reading paper tests often, in note-making and in Task 3. We'll learn what a summary really is, the clear steps for making one, how to cut what we don't need, the difference between note form and continuous prose, how to paraphrase, and how to stay inside the word limit.
What you'll learn in this lesson
By the end you should be able to (NSSCO English Second Language 5.10):
- Learners should be able to explain that a summary gives the main ideas of a text briefly, in their own words, without changing the meaning
- Learners should be able to follow the steps for summarising: read the whole text, find each paragraph's main idea, and pick out the key points
- Learners should be able to decide what to leave out of a summary — examples, repetition, descriptions, quotations and their own opinion
- Learners should be able to distinguish note form from continuous prose and use each when it is asked for
- Learners should be able to paraphrase a sentence, using synonyms and changing the sentence shape while keeping the meaning
- Learners should be able to stay within a word limit and match the number of points to the marks available
- Learners should be able to avoid lifting whole sentences and avoid adding new information that is not in the passage
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