In your own words:

Summarizing, paraphrasing and reporting

1. Introduction: Guidelines for writing summaries
Making summaries is a common activity in everyday life. If a friend asks you
about a book you are reading, you do not tell her about everything in the book.
Instead, you make a summary of the most interesting and important aspects. The
same principle applies to summarising in academic work. Different kinds of
summaries are needed in different situations.

List as many uses for summary writing as you can think of:
making notes from lectures, web source annotations ...

How long and detailed is a summary supposed to be?

In essay writing students often have to summarise a part of a book or journal
article. The summary may be just one of two sentences, to explain the main idea
of the article, and perhaps compare it with another summarised text, or it might
be necessary to include much more detail. A summary can range from 1-2% of
the original to more than 50%: summarising is a flexible tool.
Regardless of their length, features of good summaries should by all means
include (critical) selection of main ideas/features and accuracy, i.e., not distorting
the original. In other words, it is essential to keep the general gist of the text
the ideas should remain clear. In addition, it is important to keep the summaries
as objective, i.e., impersonal, as possible.

Complete the list of stages (1-5) in a successful summary by using the

provided phrases.

*use your own words

*key points *check *important ideas *order of ideas

where necessary

1. Read the text carefully and ___________ key vocabulary.

2. Underline or highlight the ____________________________.
3. Make notes of these, taking care to ________________________.

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4.

Write

the

summary

using

the

notes,

re-organizing

the

_____________________________.
5. Check the summary to make sure no ___________________have been omitted or
distorted.

2. Identifying the key point and (2-3) supporting ideas

Task 1

Underline the key point/s in the following article.

South Korea is planning to move its capital from Seoul to a new

site in the middle of the country.

Although Seoul has been the

capital since the fourteenth century, the city of over 20 million is

now very crowded, and also close to the hostile armies of North
Korea. The new capital is planned to cost $45 billion, with
construction finishing by 2012.
There is, however, strong opposition to the project, since similar
schemes in other countries have taken far longer and cost much
more than originally planned. Australia, for example, took over 70
years to finish building Canberra, while Nigeria has never
completed its planned new capital, Abuja. Both Brazil and
Malaysia have found that the building of new capitals (Brasilia
and Putrajaya) can sharply increase the national burden of debt.
Even if the government does eventually move to the new capital,
it is unlikely that South Koreas main businesses will follow it, so
Seoul will probably continue to be the countrys principal city.

Use the underlined key ideas to write a short summary (3-4

sentences).

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Compare the model answer below (75 words) with the original
article on page 2. Which typical features of summaries do you
notice?

It is planned to move South Koreas capital from Seoul to a central site by 2012, at a
cost of $45 billion. Although Seoul is crowded and too near the border, critics claim that
this scheme will be too expensive and take too long. Businesses are unlikely to move
away from Seoul when the government does. Other countries have experienced severe
problems with capital relocation.

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3. Paraphrasing
How close to the original is a summary supposed to be?
When ideas from a text are reported, they sometimes need to be paraphrased,
i.e., written in another way without changing the meaning. This is done for
several reasons, one of them being avoiding the repetition. Sometimes, to make
sure a point has been made, the same idea will be expressed in a few different
ways. A good paraphrase is significantly different from the wording of the
original, without altering the meaning at all.

3.1. Techniques used in paraphrasing

Task 2
1. Changing vocabulary*
Find synonyms for the words in italics.
example:
a. The rise of the automobile industry matches the progress of contemporary
capitalism.
>>> The growth of the car industry parallels the development of modern
capitalism.
b. It began in France and Germany, but took of in the United States.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
c. There Henry Ford adapted the moving production line from the Chicago meat
industry
to motor manufacturing, thus inventing mass production.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
* Not all words should be paraphrased, of course. There are words and

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phrases, such as economics, or global warming etc. that have no efective

synonyms.

2. Changing word class

example:
a. In the 1920s Alfred Sloans management theories helped General Motors to
become the worlds dominant car industry.
>>> In the 1920s, with help from the managerial theories of Alfred Sloan,
General Motors dominated the worlds car companies.
b. After the Second World War the industry developed planned
obsolescence, whereby frequent model changes encouraged customers to
buy new cars more often than they needed to.
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
c. Later, from the 1970s, environmentalists began to criticise the industry for
producing inefficient models which used too much fuel, contributing to global
warming.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________

3. Changing word order

Note. In the examples below, apart from the changes in the word order, other
changes may
be needed.
example:
a. At this time, trade unions became increasingly militant in defense of their
members jobs.
>>> In those days, in the attempt to defend their members jobs, trade unions
became
increasingly militant.
b. Today the industry owns some of the strongest brands in the world.
_______________________________________________________________________

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_______________________________________________________________________
c. However, many major car companies struggle with stagnant markets and
falling profits.
_______________________________________________________________________

3.2. Practice:Changing word class (Word building)

Task 3
Read the text below and find out how the development of IT has afected
organisational structure.

In the text, write the correct form of the word by using the related word in the
column on the right.
Decide whether the missing word is a noun, verb, adjective or adverb.
If necessary, use the negative form of the words on the right.

Impact of ICT on organisational structure

The introduction of IT has tended to lead to flatter organisational

organisati

structures.

on

The flat (or horizontal) structure presents an alternative to the

______________ structure. In a flat structure there are fewer layers, but

hierarchy

the spans of control (ie, the number of ___________ directly supervised

employ

by one person) are much wider.

One reason for that is the ______________ of IT and the pace of

introduce

hardware and software development means that frequent change is

avoid

____________
and businesses must be dynamic to cope with the change.

perform

IT systems provide better information on staff _____________.

appear

Some jobs at lower levels may _____________ altogether as a result of

grow

the ________________ of word-processing.

enter

New, direct methods of data _______________ reduce the number of

clerk

_____________ staff needed.

reduce

All these changes have resulted in the ____________ of the number of

levels in an organisation.

erosion

Over the last decade, the jobs of middle managers have been

contribute

____________.

able

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_____________causes include the developments in IT and

strategy

communications.

interpret

These have _____________ information to be produced in a form

decide

suitable for the __________________ managers directly from the

increase

operational level, without the need for manipulation and

involve

________________ by middle managers.

Many _____________that used to be taken by middle managers are now
taken by computer-based systems. ______________, operational staff
can work without needing direct middle management
__________________.

4. Style transfer
To summarize an informal text, changes in the register are necessary
since your summary should be written in a neutral style, regardless of the
source. (Register refers to the style of language, grammar, and words
used for particular situations.)
Register (or style) transfer can be compared to translating one text into
another in the same language. In doing so, paraphrasing once again turns
out to be an important procedure. In style transfer, as in paraphrasing in
general, changes in vocabulary, word category and word order are
required.
Some of the reasons for style transfer are related to:
1) replacing the informal features in the original text to achieve a
more neutral register
( see Task 4 on the following page)
This equally implies changes in vocabulary and changes in structure. Note
that in paraphrasing an informal text you may actually have to add the
missing words rather than delete the unnecessary ones. To achieve a
neutral register, the original tone (saracastic, humorous etc.) also needs to
be adapted.
2) substituting idioms that may be a distinct feature of a particular
jargon with their more commonplace equivalents
( see Task 5 on page 8)

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 Task 4
Consider the paragraph below. What difficulties in summarizing such a text can
you anticipate?

Ok, this is how it goes. I was at an international conference recently (I go to a lot of conferences)
and I found myself in conversation with a colleague at the end of a long conference day. But we
werent complaining about the content of the talks and we certainly werent having a go at the
presenters (People in glass houses....). No, what we were moaning about was death-byPowerPoint. And the more I experience PowerPoint, and the more I think about it, the more
overheated I become. Why, I can feel myself getting all steamed up even as I type. And the
reason Im getting worked up is because there are ten things about PowerPoint that I absolutely
hate. I mean hate, OK?

Guess what the topic of the text is.

Find 2-3 examples of vocabulary / structures in the text you would

need to change to make the style less informal / conversational.

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Think about how to deal with the author's personal opinion expressed
in the text - summarize it in a neutral way.

Task 5

Guess what the topic of the text is.

Identify several idioms other phrases in the text that may need to be
paraphrased in writing a summary. Some phrases have been underlined
for you (examples A and B).

How will you paraphrase phrases containing a lot of accurate numerical

data? (example C)

Provide alternatives in Englsih for the phrases you have identified.

() The proliferation of mobile phones too A) has played catalyst to the growth of e-commerce.
In terms of mobile subscriptions, India is the world's second-largest wireless market after China.
Currently, there are 261 million mobile subscribers, including 73 million rural mobile users. And
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the B) current mobile penetration of 36 percent leaves a lot of potential for growth. Rajan said:
"Every bank and financial institution wants to be part of this bandwagon by offering mobile
banking services to its customers."
The travel industry too has witnessed a lot of activity in the area of e-payments. According to a
survey undertaken by market research company eMarketer, India's online travel market is
predicted to grow C) by 46 percent per annum between 2007 and 2011 and generate
earnings of US$4 billion by 2011.
Rural India, however, is grossly divorced from the stupendous growth rates being experienced in
the e-payments industry. It is a vast, untapped market. However, the customer base is equally
challenging. PayPal's Shiliashki is of the view that if the government achieves its goal of reaching
20 million broadband users by 2010, a greater usage of the Internet and increased familiarity with
the opportunities it brings along will result in wider local adoption of e-commerce in India. ()

Key
Page 6
organisational
introduction
disappear
clerical
contributory
interpretation
involvement

hierarchical
employees
inevitable
performance
growth
entry
reduction
eroded
enabled
strategic
decisions
increasingly

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