← 📝 English as a Second Language
Summary writing
Selecting the relevant ideas from a text and rewriting them concisely in your own words as continuous prose.
📌 Key points
- Read the task carefully: a summary answers a specific focus, such as 'the benefits of ...' or 'the problems faced by ...', so include only points about that focus.
- Underline the relevant points in the text first, then plan before writing.
- Write in continuous prose — full sentences in a paragraph — not in notes or bullet points.
- Use your own words as far as possible; change the vocabulary and sentence structure instead of copying whole sentences.
- Leave out examples, repetition, descriptive detail, quotations and anything that is not relevant to the focus.
- Do not add your own opinions or information that is not in the text.
- Use linking words such as 'also', 'in addition', 'however' and 'as a result' to connect ideas smoothly.
- Keep to the word limit given; writing much more than the limit usually means you have included irrelevant detail.
- Group similar ideas together and combine them in one sentence to save words — for example, 'cheap, fast and reliable'.
- A summary should have a neutral, formal tone and is often written in the third person.
📖 Key terms
- Summary
- A shortened version of a text that keeps only its main relevant points.
- Continuous prose
- Writing in full, linked sentences and paragraphs rather than notes.
- Concise
- Expressing ideas clearly in as few words as possible.
- Own words
- Wording that changes the original vocabulary and structure while keeping the meaning.
- Focus
- The specific aspect of the text that the summary must cover.
- Irrelevant
- Not connected to the focus of the task.
- Connective
- A linking word or phrase that joins ideas, such as 'furthermore' or 'however'.
✏️ Worked example
Text: 'Many people now work from home. They save time and money because they no longer travel to an office. My cousin, for example, saves two hours a day. However, some workers feel lonely, and others find it hard to stop working in the evening.'
Summarise the disadvantages of working from home.
- Identify the focus: disadvantages only, so saving time and money is not relevant.
- Find the disadvantages: feeling lonely; finding it hard to stop working in the evening.
- Ignore the example about the cousin: it supports an advantage and is an example.
- Rewrite in your own words and link the ideas: 'isolated' for 'lonely', 'switch off' for 'stop working'.
- Answer: Home workers may feel isolated, and some struggle to switch off from work at the end of the day.
Copying long phrases from the text loses language marks. Change the words and the sentence structure, but keep the meaning exactly the same.
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