Reading Skills for Academic Study
Summarising & note-taking
Summarising
Example 2
As part of an essay, you need to include a section of about 100 words on the advantages and disadvantages of progress from the Samoans' point of view. You find the following text:
Progress in Samoa Samoa Sasa sat cross-legged in his one-room, open-air home, shooing away chickens that strutted across the floor mats. Bananas cooked on the wood stove. Naked children cried in nearby huts. From one hut came the voice of Sinatra singing 'Strangers in the Night' on a local radio station. (From an article in The Guardian by David Lamb) |
How do you go about it?
One possible approach is to go through the following steps:
- Read through the text from beginning to end.
- Remember your purpose: to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of progress from the Samoans' point of view.
- Select the relevant information
- Mark all the points which should come into your answer. Do this very carefully, and be sure not to miss anything.
- Change the structure. You should now have a brief list in your own words of all the points you marked in 4.
- Sasa frightened by progress
- doesn't understand development
- Samoa poor country, needs change
- Sasa doesn't want change fast
- doesn't want young people to emigrate
- many other Samoans confused
- Samoans want benefits of progress
- but don't want to lose traditional culture
- they want balance past and future
- system of land ownership inefficient
- electoral system undemocratic
- money sent by emigrants good for economy
- but causes inflation and neglect of land
- Without looking at the original text, join these points together into a paragraph. Change the order of the points if necessary, to make the construction more logical. Use conjunctions and adverbs such as 'therefore', 'however', 'although', 'since', to show the connections between the ideas.
Here is a possible paragraph:
Samoa is a very poor country with an inefficient system of land ownership and an undemocratic electoral system. Change is necessary; however, many Samoans, like Samoa Sasa, are worried about the speed of development. They want the benefits of progress, but find it difficult to understand what is happening, and are frightened of losing their traditional way of life. They do not want their young people to leave for New Zealand, and although the emigrants send money home, the increased wealth is causing neglect of the land and inflation. Samoa's problem is to find a compromise between past and future.
Look again at the text, just to check that you have not changed the meaning of anything; make corrections or rewrite the paragraph if necessary.
Now try this question yourself: As part of the same essay, you need to include a paragraph of not more than 100 words describing the changes that are taking place in Samoa. Write the paragraph.
Press this to see a possible answer.
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