Set a precise summary purpose
Tell learners what they must summarise: causes, stages, findings or an argument. Establish audience and a classroom word budget. The budget is chosen for this activity; it is not a universal examination limit.
EAL teaching portal · Practical guidance
Teach summary writing
Teach selection, accurate paraphrase and compression, then transfer the skill to text, audio and video.
Separate main ideas from examples
Model which ideas answer the summary question. Highlight evidence and examples differently. Keep a detail when it is essential to the question; avoid removing all numbers or qualifications automatically.
Compress without changing meaning
Remove repetition, combine related points and change sentence structure. Retain technical terms, quantities and uncertainty where needed. Synonym substitution alone is not reliable paraphrasing.
Build continuous prose together
Turn selected notes into connected sentences. Co-construct a short opening and compare alternatives for accuracy and economy. Then ask learners to finish independently from their own notes.
Review content before surface accuracy
Compare against the essential points, check any added claims, then review coherence and word budget. Use peer review followed by teacher sampling. Classroom checklists do not replace official mark schemes.
Transfer to viewing and listening
Take notes on the stages of a process or a speaker’s central claims. Pause for gist and detail, then summarise from notes. Gradually reduce shared highlighting, prefilled notes and sentence frames.
Try a summary from an original classroom text
A school tested two lunchtime waste stations for five days. The first used mixed bins. The second had separate labelled bins for food scraps and recyclable containers. Staff counted fewer recyclable containers in the mixed waste at the second station. Some learners still put food wrappers in the wrong bin. Student helpers explained the labels during the final two days. The school plans a longer trial before deciding whether to add the stations elsewhere.
Task: Summarise the trial’s design, finding and next step in no more than 45 words. Keep the uncertainty of a short trial.
Compare a possible 42-word summary
The school compared mixed and labelled waste stations for five days. Fewer recyclables entered mixed waste at the labelled station, although some sorting errors remained. Helpers explained labels for two days. A longer trial will inform whether the school expands the scheme.
Teacher review checklist
- Includes the comparison, duration, main finding and planned longer trial.
- Does not claim that labels alone caused the result.
- Includes the helpers if interpreting why the result occurred.
- Preserves meaning and produces connected prose within the classroom budget.
Word counting here uses whitespace-separated words; formal assessment conventions may differ.
Make it work in your classroom
Draft here, download an editable HTML copy, or print the guide and plan. Drafts are stored in this browser when available. Use anonymised observations.
Adapted from Duncan Rose’s supplied summary-writing teaching material. Examples and activities below are newly written. Use the task’s actual genre, syllabus and assessment criteria; historical examination details in the source are not presented as current rules.