English Language Writing Skills

By Danso Kwasi Nti Samuel (DAS). Study the complete course source, examine every model and practise alongside Professor Jarvis.

Course printed page 484 PDF page 490 of 505

For tables, matching columns, IPA and original formatting, open the course PDF above.

Note: The summary must be free from any colouring words such as adjectives, adverbs,

idioms, phrases, etc.

All we must note is that the summary must be a noun (pronoun) + action + noun. Anything

apart from this is wrong.

For example, after a football match, if anyone asks you what happened, are you going to run

a commentary from pre-match to post-match, or will you first say any of the following?

   1. Kotoko scored hearts.

   2. Real Madrid beats Chelsea.

   3. Heats drew with the Olympics.

Like the above, they summarise the whole matches. The two teams, the outcome.

Note: The number of scores is not needed in the summary in that it is an adverb. So noun

(Kotoko) + (scored) + Hearts (noun).

What you can figure out in reality for you to understand summary to be your own is to take

it as the first answer people give when they are asked a question in a formal way. All answers

to summary are the topic sentence, which is mostly the first sentence of the paragraph.

Whatever the position of the topic sentences, are answers to the summary? What will you

tell anyone when he asks you to tell him what you are reading? If you will be able to tell the

person in one sentence, then that is the summary you are doing.

Steps in answering summary questions

   1. Read the first question for the demand of the question.

   2. Read the first paragraph to the second, locate the answer by looking for the topic

      sentence, find the answer of the summary, and underline the answer in the passage.

   3. Write your answer in complete sentence form with a full stop.