• English summary is about making passages or essays shorter.

• In order to write a summary;

➢ Read and understand the passage very well.

➢ Read and understand the questions.

➢ Skim through the passage to find possible answers to the questions.

➢ Summarize the possible answers to the possible answers you found (i.e.

Make them shorter).

HOW TO WRITE A SUMMARY

✓ Locate the central idea of the possible answer you found to the question.

✓ If that answer has a clause or a phrase in it, you could make them shorter by

replacing them with a single word.

✓ Remove unnecessary phrases which only add extra information about the subject or object of the sentence (modifiers).

✓ When writing out the answer do not give alternatives. It would only make the

sentence longer.

EXAMPLES

P.S, I would be using sentences to illustrate all that I said instead of paragraphs because when you skim through the passage to find possible answers, they would be in a sentence form and it is those sentences you would summarize into the answers to the questions.

1. Julie says the metal is liable to break.

In the sentence above, we can locate a clause which reads ‘liable to break’

That clause could be replaced with the word ‘brittle’.

This implies that the example I stated above could be rephrased as; ‘Julie says the metal is brittle’

2. Kofi, the owner of the bookshop across the road has arrived in Accra

From this example stated, we can see a modifier which reads; ‘the owner of the book- shop across the road’.

The modifier is not so important in the sentence and hence can be eliminated. Therefore, the sentence could be written as; ‘Kofi has arrived in Accra’.

NB: When writing a summary, do not lift answers directly from the passage as your answers. You won’t gain any marks.

Also, please check your grammar. Your punctuations, spellings, capitalization, among others. So, the summary of all you read is,

❖ Read and understand the passage or sentence you want to summarize.

❖ Eliminate modifiers.

❖ Substitute phrases and clauses with just a word.