Secondary 2
Term 1 Lesson 5
Introduction to Summary 1
INTRODUCTION TO SUMMARY 1
(A) INTRODUCTION
What is summary writing?
A summary is the condensed version of a passage. Summary writing involves using your own
words to succinctly explain the main idea and relevant details of the passage you have just read.
Your marker will be able to tell if you have understood the passage by reading your summary.
While some of us regard the summary section of the comprehension paper as a challenge,
what many do not realise is that we are constantly using summary skills in our daily
lives, such as when we
•
•
Update our parents on what we have learnt in school or
Share our holiday adventures with our friends and classmates.
Our worksheets are
designed to enable quick
understanding with step-bystep tend
guides.
you
to leave out
Now, carefully consider the above examples. Did you notice that
insignificant details in those recounts? If you had gone to Universal Studios Singapore over
the holidays, for instance, would you later recount to your friends your preparations on that
day, such as how you brushed your teeth? No, you probably would not; you will only mention
the salient points.
Summary writing is therefore not an insurmountable challenge. Let us go through the steps for
writing a good summary:
Step 1:
Step 2:
Step 3:
Step 4:
Step 5:
Read the passage carefully. Understand the gist of the passage.
Analyse the summary question.
Find the relevant points.
Rephrase the points in your own words. Shorten the points.
Edit to make sure your answer flows smoothly and is within the word limit.
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Step 1:
Read the passage carefully. Understand the gist of the passage.
You cannot summarise what you do not understand. To quickly grasp the main points of the
passage, you should skim through it. Skimming is used to quickly identify the main points in
a text. This technique is useful when you want to get a brief overview of the passage rather
than thorough comprehension.
Skim through the following excerpt. Underline words which would help you to identify the gist
of the excerpt.
Cloning has remained a controversial issue since the birth of a sheep named Dolly, the first
00cloned mammal, dominated worldwide headlines in 1996. Created by scientists instead of by
nature, Dolly’s successful reproduction from the adult female sheep from which she was
created sparked fierce debate about the ethics and repercussions of cloning. Simply put,
As much
we would
cloning is the creation of an organism that
is an as
exact
geneticlove
copy of another. It has raised
to show you everything,
the question of potential scientific applications,
including the prospect of human cloning.
we cannot be showing you
Although cloning advocates position it the
as abest.
way 
to help infertile couples, and to grow healthy
organs for transplant into waiting patients, those in opposition express three concerns:
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view the full set!
Step 2:
Analyse the summary question.
You cannot answer a question without knowing precisely what it wants. Thus, before you move
on to searching the passage for points, you should:
1) Read the summary question and instructions carefully.
2) Circle the keywords in the question.
3) Clarify for yourself what should be included, as well as what should not.
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ACTIVITY 1
Analyse the information below, circling the keywords as needed, and then answer the
following questions.
Write a summary on the banes of cloning, using evidence from Paragraphs 3 – 5.
Your summary, which should be in continuous writing, should be no more than 80
words, excluding the opening words below. Do not copy long phrases or sentences
from the passage. Use our own words as far as possible. [15]
Begin your summary with:
Opponents of cloning believe that…
1. What are the points that should be summarised in the passage?
______________________________________________________________________
2. What are the restrictions for this summary?
______________________________________________________________________
3. Where can you find the relevant information in the passage?
______________________________________________________________________
Step 3:
Find the relevant points.
While reading the passage a second or third time, do the following:
1) Skim – Identify the information you need quickly. In a summary, you will be instructed
to find certain facts, so a big chunk of the text is not necessarily important.
Do drop by our
centre to view the
or
phrases are more
full set of materials.
2) Find key words – Some words
them to reduce the amount of unnecessary words.
important than others. Underline
Consider the summary question given in Step 2. What are a few of the words and phrases
you should be looking out for in the passage?
Answer: __________________________________________________________________
3) Identify topic sentences – Each paragraph’s main idea is normally conveyed in its
topic sentence. Summarising becomes a whole lot easier once we have identified these
topic sentences.
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Now, read the following passage and identify its relevant points.
1 Have you ever wished you had a twin? Do you wish you could be cloned?
2
3
4
5
Cloning has remained a controversial issue since the birth of a sheep named Dolly,
the first cloned mammal, dominated worldwide headlines in 1996. Created by
scientists instead of by nature, Dolly’s successful reproduction from the adult
female sheep from which she was created sparked fierce debate about the ethics
and repercussions of cloning. Simply put, cloning is the creation of an organism
that is an exact genetic copy of another. It has raised the question of potential
scientific applications, including the prospect of human cloning. Although cloning
advocates position it as a way to help infertile couples, and to grow healthy organs
for transplant into waiting patients, those in opposition express three concerns:
technical failures, inbreeding issues, and the “playing God” objection.
Despite advances in scientific understanding, humankind remains students of
biology, particularly the inter-workings of living beings. Scientists have by no
means mastered cloning, as evidenced by efforts that have regularly resulted in
animals suffering from retardation, mutations, and shortened lifespans. Even with
Dolly, 277 abnormalities preceded the creation of this "successful" clone, which
reportedly suffered from arthritis and cells that aged faster than a normal sheep.
Additionally, tests by the University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Centre
and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, have suggested that cloned animals suffer from enlarged organs or
compromised genomes, an organism’s inheritable traits.
Inbreeding is another concern. Species that have very little genetic variation are at
a great risk in this respect. Healthy reproduction becomes increasingly difficult,
and offspring often deal with similar problems to those of inbreeding. Life depends
on the diversity of genes, which stems from parents having different sets of genes.
Using identical genes to create and recreate life, as is the practice in cloning,
weakens an organism’s power and adaptations, increasing its susceptibility to
diseases. Since cloning involves copying identical genes, it will eventually decrease
the diversity of genes. Continual inbreeding could lead to a species’ extinction.
Lastly, cloning opponents object to scientists “playing God” by not only creating
life in a laboratory but experimenting on and deciding the fate of that life. Too
many unpredictable factors exist. Environmental implications may arise from
cloning an extinct species, which could disrupt ecosystems no longer able to
support those species. The proliferation of cloned animals, especially since Dolly,
and related research has also brought the prospect of human cloning to the
forefront. From engineering “the perfect child” to harvesting brain cells, muscle
tissue, and perhaps entire organs from human embryos, anti-cloning activists
regard scientists as having overstepped their ethical bounds. Pro-life groups
believe life begins at conception, and thus that embryos subjected to
experimentation, dismemberment, and death for the sake of science or
transplantation are, in their religious view, living, viable human beings. Despite
good intentions on the part of scientists, in this light cloning is seen as a
monstrous, Frankenstein-esque procedure. Cloning continues, but its future
applications remain uncertain.
1
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Adapted from www.ehow.com
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Step 4:
Rephrase the points in your own words. Shorten the points.
This is often the part which students struggle with. Remember, we must not lift phrases and
sentences from the passage. After you have identified the relevant points and underlined them,
you need a wide range of vocabulary to effectively find as few words as possible to replace
them while retaining the same meaning.
There are a few points to take note of:
-
Keep only the relevant points with necessary words.
-
After identifying the points that answer the question, change the keys words or idea into
your own words. This does not mean a word for word replacement.
-
Remove examples and details that are repeated or unnecessary and categorise ideas.
Before we try out the summary question, let’s try our hand at word substitution.
ACTIVITY 2: WORD GROUP
Look at the following group of words and write down the category that they belong to.
Example: nurse, cashier, typist, actor – occupations
1. television, newspaper, magazine, radio
___________________________
2. fork, spoon, knife, chopsticks
___________________________
3. Shakespeare, JK Rowling, Charles Dickens
___________________________
4. diamond, opal, ruby, emerald, jade, sapphire
___________________________
5. Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Jakarta, Bangkok
___________________________
6. smallpox, measles, mumps
___________________________
7. hammer, screwdriver, hatchet
___________________________
8. mouse, keyboard, hard drive, monitor
___________________________
9. Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam
___________________________
10. slippers, trainers, shoes, flip-flops, sandals
___________________________
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ACTIVITY 3: WORD SUBSTITUTION
It would also be good for you to know the synonyms of commonly used words. List as
many synonyms as you can for the following words:
1. hate:
___________________________________________________________
2. slow:
___________________________________________________________
3. obvious:
___________________________________________________________
4. object:
___________________________________________________________
5. agree:
___________________________________________________________
6. supporter: ___________________________________________________________
7. opponent: ___________________________________________________________
Do drop by our
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full set of materials.
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Step 5:
Edit to make sure your answer flows and does not exceed the word limit.
1. ________________________________________________________________________
Getting to the point where
________________________________________________________________________
2.
our students are able to write
a good summary takes much
________________________________________________________________________
knowledge and practice.
________________________________________________________________________
That is why our worksheets are
3.
engineered in such a way to do just
that!
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
8. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
9. ________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Content:
Language:
Total:
/8 marks (Any 8 points)
/7 marks
/15 marks
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(B) EDITING
Carefully read the text below. For eight of the numbered lines, there is one grammatical
error. There are two more numbered lines with no errors. [10]



If there is NO error in a line, put a tick () in the space provided.
If the line is incorrect, circle the incorrect word and write the correct word in the space
provided.
The correct word you provide must not change the original meaning of the sentence.
Practice May not Make Perfect
Answers:
Master the violin takes 10,000 hours of practice. Once you have done E.g. Mastering
so, only then would expertise follow. This, at least, is what many music 1. ____________
teachers, following Malcolm Gladwell’s prescription of achieving 2. ____________
expertise in almost any field by applying the requisite amount of efforts, 3. ____________
told their pupils. Psychologists are more sceptical. Some agree practice 4. ____________
truly is the thing that separates experts from novices, but others 5. ____________
suspects that genes play a role, too. So without the right genes, even 6. ____________
20,000 hours of practice would be pointless. The study just published 7. ____________
in Psychological Science, by Ms Miriam Mosing of the Karolinska 8. ____________
Institute at Sweden, suggests that the sceptics are right. Practising 9. ____________
music without the right genes is indeed useless. They found that there 10. ____________
appeared to be no relationship between practice and musical ability.
Adapted from www.economist.com
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Additional reading is
provided so that our
students are exposed to
current affairs.
(C) SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Rare Sun Yat Sen Calligraphy on Display (09/11/14)
A special work of Chinese calligraphy is among various new exhibits at the newly revamped Sun Yat
Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall. It is by Dr Sun himself and says “jian wei gong de”, which means thrift is
a universal virtue.
Psychiatrist John Bosco Lee bought it at an auction in Hong Kong about three years ago. “I wanted it
because it gives me a glimpse of who Dr Sun was and what his values or philosophy were,” said Dr
Lee, 44, a senior consultant at Novena Medical Centre. The avid art collector is also an admirer of
Dr Sun, especially for his successful 1911 revolution which ended 267 years of Qing dynasty rule in
China. He has loaned the piece on a long-term basis to the museum, which completed its revamp
about three weeks ago, after 18 months.
Museum general manager Tan Teng Phee, 42, said the work is one of 17 items contributed by the
community and among 160 new exhibits. “This calligraphy piece is probably written in the early 1920s
after the successful revolution to caution the Chinese people against the bad habit of wastage,” he
added. Dr Lee said it came from a collector in Taiwan. He offered it to the museum because he
wanted more people to see and appreciate it. “It is probably the only one of its kind, unlike his more
common calligraphy works such ‘bo ai’ (universal love) and ‘tian xia wei gong’ (equality for all),” he
added.
Other artefacts the museum received from the community include a 1929 English edition of the
poem Li Sao, which means encountering sorrows, by Warring States patriot Qu Yuan. It was
translated by Singapore pioneer Chinese community leader Lim Boon Keng, who was bilingual. “It is
one of only two copies of the translation remaining, and it was Dr Lim’s attempt to introduce
Chinese classical literature to the early Chinese community members here who read only in English,
especially the Straits-born Chinese,” said Mr Alex Tan, 70, trustee of the Settlement of Dr Lim Boon
Keng, who also loaned the piece to the museum on a long-term basis.
Another new exhibit is the original name plaque of the 177-year-old Chung Shan Association, the clan
association for immigrants from Dr Sun’s native home, Zhongshan district in China’s Guangzhou
province. It bears the district’s original name, Xiang Yi, which was changed to Chung Shan after Dr
Sun’s death in 1925 in his honour. Made in 1845, it is on loan to the museum from the clan
association.
Also on display at the museum now is a hologram of Dr Sun speaking to his Singapore supporters at
the villa in Tai Gin Road, off Balestier Road, on his revolutionary plans.
A special exhibition on the Zhongshan warship which provided refuge to Dr Sun and his wife, Madam
Soong Ching Ling, in 1922 is also on at the museum until April next year.
Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited.
Reproduced with permission.
~ The End ~
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