Summary and Comprehension By Eguriase S. M. Okaka

 

 SUMMARY AND COMPREHENSION

                                      

                                           BY EGURIASE S. M. OKAKA

 

SUMMARY

“Summary” as used in school certificate examination has specifically, a quite different meaning from it ordinary dictionary meaning.  In school certificate examination, summary questions are proceeded by a question or questions calculated to test the student’s comprehension of the passage, by culture of asking the student to discern and extract the relevant leading ideas of the passage or prose, leaving out everything that is unnecessary, and reducing these major ideas to writing in a number of statements or sentences.

 

GENERAL RULES FOR WRITING SUMMARY

 

·        Read the question or questions first, and know precisely what you are required to do, before reading the passage or prose.

·        As you read the passage with “slow-hurry” make marks on various parts of the passage that have something to do with the idea you are looking for.

·        Read the passage again paying more attention now only to the relevant parts you have marked.

·        When you are sure you have found the right ideas required read the question(s) or instruction(s) again and write out your summary.

·        In your answer you are to eliminate the figurative languages of the passage or prose, if any, and try as much as possible to use your own words.

·        Write your summary in correct sentences, that is, sentences which make sense. Do not overwork your sentences, by making so many connections or conjunctions in them.

·        Be the best you can be.

 

EXAMPLE OF A SUMMARY QUESTION

 

Question:

Read the following passage or prose, and then write two sentences, stating those major problems of developing countries which are mentioned in the passage.

 

“PUPOLATION PROBLEMS IN DEVEVELOPING COUNTRIES”

 

Unemployment and under-employment in developing countries are more acute in the areas outside a few metropolitan cities, so there is mass migration into these cities in a desperate search for livelihood, and the cities themselves in spite of rapid economic growth, become infested with ever-growing multitudes destitute of people. Any visitor who has ventured outside the opulent districts of these cities has seen their shanty towns and belts of misery. Which are often growing ten times as fast as the cities themselves?

 

Current forecasts of the growth of metropolitan areas in India, and marry other developing countries, conjure up a picture of towns with 20, 40 and even 60 million people. – a prospect ‘immigration’ for a rootless and jobless mass of humanity that begs the immigration.

 

No amount of brave statistics of national’s income growth can hide the fact that all too many developing countries are suffering from the twin disease of growing unemployment and mushrooming metropolitan slums, which is placing their social and political fabric under an intolerable strain. The suspicious has been voiced (and cannot be dismissed out of land) that foreign aid, as current practiced, may actually be intensifying these twin diseases instead of mitigating them, that the heedless rush into modernization extinguishes old jobs faster than it can create new ones, and that all the apparent increases in national income are eaten up, or even more than eaten up, by the crushing economic burdens produced by excessive urban growth.  It is rather obvious that a man’s cost of subsistence – something very different from his standard life – rises significantly the moment he moves from a small town or rural area into the big city.

 

SUMMARY

 

·        Unemployment and underemployment which causes poor unemployed people to congregate in cities in great slums over strains the economy, for people must live even though they have no work.

·        The problem of employment and gathering slums became ironical with even foreign aid, for modern industries are set up where machine do more work than men.

 

COMPREHENSION EXERCISE

 

A comprehension exercise just like the summary, involve a passage of prose, but, unlike the summary, in the comprehension exercise, your understanding of the passage or prose is tested by a number of free-response questions, or even multiple-choice questions; the answers to which may not (unless, like in the summary, such are expressly required) require sentences that make complete sense. Indeed, at times, in comprehension exercises you may even answer a question by a word or phrase, at times you may even lift this word or phrase from the passage (unless you are expressly told not to do so, like in summary).

 

GENERAL RULES FOR COMPREHENSION EXERCISE

 

·        Read the questions first and know specifically all that you are asked to do.

·        With the questions at the back of your mind, read the passage, and understand it only in relation to the questions you have in mind. Mark the parts of the passage that are relevant to the answers you seek.

·        Read the passage again making sure of your answers.

·        Then, write your answer to the questions of comprehension.

 

EXAMPLES OF COMPREHENSION EXERCISE

 

Question:

Read following passage, and answer the question below:

 

PLANKTON

 

All the fish hinges on the presence of plankton which in turn depend upon minute algae which take their nourishment directly from the sea. They are present even in the clearest water of the most sparkling lagoon. Plankton occurs in an unbelievable profession and variety. Plankton is merely the term to describe shared characteristics: an incapacity for voluntary movement. Some plankton are vegetables, some are simple animals such as diatoms, some are crustacean larval fish. But whatever their character, whether vegetable or animal or trebling on the brink between the two, they are defenseless almost.

 

They cannot flee. They cannot fight back. They can only submit. For all creatures with appropriate mouths they are cheap and helpless victims. But they do have a defense a staggering capacity to reproduce. There is no limit to their growth, for all they need for existence is sea water. Where the water is rich enough the plankton will become so thick that they form an edible cloud. It is set upon instantly by creatures as small as arrow worms and as large as whales. The slaughter is immense, but some always survive.

 

Eugene Burdick: The Blue of Capricorn.

 

Question:

 

·        Does plankton feed on anything? If so, what? If not where do they take nourishment?

·        Name two major characteristics shared by all plankton?

·        Explain in your words, ‘an incapacity for voluntary movement.

·        Which of the following statement corresponds to the information in the passage?

v All plankton are fish.

v All plankton are vegetables.

v All plankton are animals.

v Plankton can be animal, vegetable or fish.

·        Plankton are preyed upon by all kinds of sea creature. How then do they manage to survive?

 

Answer:

·        Yes plankton feed on minute algae which take their nourishment from the sea.

·        (i) Incapacity for the voluntary movement.

(ii) Plankton are defenseless.

·        Plankton cannot will to move themselves.

·        IV plankton can be animal, vegetable or fish.

·        They survive because of their staggering capacity to reproduce and because of the condition that all they need for existence is sea water.

 

 

THE END