2. Summarising

S UMMARISING follows note-making. The purpose of note-making is usually for one’s own personal reference. If the main points are to be reported we present a summary. It is not as severely shortened as note-making.

Summarising is the selection and paraphrasing of all important information of the original source. This is done by analysing the paragraphs/passage in order to formulate a plan of writing. The process of summarising would involve the steps followed in note-making: . underlining important ideas .

writing them down, abridging the verbs . avoiding examples, explanations, repetition. However, instead of nominalising the points (changing verbs into nouns), we expand the points into full sentences and link them using suitable connectors. We need to be precise in our expression.

The summary will contain all the main ideas of the original. Practice in using one word for many will help. For example: Children who show intelligence far beyond their age often turn out to be mediocre in adult life. or Precocious children often turn out to be mediocre in adult life.

Her genius was marked by excellence in the various arts, languages and science. or She was a versatile genius.