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
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