Precis writing: Main Idea extracting; Steps; Types of passages; Precis practice on different passages

1. Precis Writing

2. Definition of Precis [PREY-SEE]
• A short summary of a passage
• About one-third the length of the original passage
• Purpose: to provide a gist of the ideas to someone, who has not read the original
passage
• Very useful in:
✓Legal drafting [ where a student has to summarize upon a judgement]
✓Academic reading [ where, a student has to summarize, on won words, a passage
or chapter in a book, in order to understand it]

3. Why is precis a skill?
It tests your ability to:
✓Collect important information from a passage
✓Express your understanding in your own words
✓Use vocabulary to shorten the number of words.

4. 1. Heading
2. Topic Sentence
3. Conclusion
4. Repetitions
5. Purpose of the passage

5. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
1. Read the Heading
In case you are reading an essay, the entire passage will be divided into
sub-parts, each dealing with one idea. Each of that part will have a
heading, that reflects that idea.
2. Read the topic sentence
If you are just reading a large paragraph, just locate the topic sentence.
All other sentences will be details and examples of that topic-sentence
idea. [if you get a text in exam, which has 3-4 paragraphs, just extract
topic sentences from each. Those 3-4 lines are good for precis]

6. Title hints this passage is
about:
1. Animals
2. Growing

8. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
3. Read the conclusion
• A conclusion will always have a re-statement of the topic sentence.
So, to confirm whether you got the main idea, just look into the
conclusion.
• Conclusion-line also confirms the attitude of the author: positive or
negative, towards a topic.

9. 84 Words
Precis:
Different animals grow in
fascinatingly different ways.
Some, like humans, grow
gradually. Some, like frogs,
grow abruptly. Some, like
butterflies, grow is stages.
[23 words]

10. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
4. Locate repetitions to get main-idea
• Mark out the words / ideas are repeated in the paragraph.
• Logically, any point, that a writer wants to develop, will be repeated 2-3 times.
• Each repeat will have an example; or a new fact; or, category [first..second..third]
This method is helpful, if you do not have a topic sentence, conclusion or heading.

11. Water
Specific location:
Water in Beach
Away from people;
Friends
Precis: Clare spent peaceful
moments alone, on the beach,
thinking of her friends at work.
[13 words]
72 WORDS

12. Steps to extract main ideas from a passage
5. Locate the purpose of the passage. Any passage is mainly of 3 purposes:
✓To inform
✓To Instruct
✓To persuade
• When you locate the purpose, it could prove crucial to pack the meaning of a lot
of words.
Eg.: description of an event; a place; a person; history. Eg.: Indian Freedom movement; an
episode of Mahatma Gandhi’s life. Tsunami. A nice / bad experience faced by a person.
It mainly feels like ‘Wikipedia data’ or a ‘nice story’
Eg.: Moral passages, that tell us do’s and don’ts in life. Eg.: We should obey the law. Take
care of our parents. Treat animals kindly, etc.
Debate-passages, that will give opinion about a topic. The writer wants to convince you
to think positively or negatively about that topic.
Eg.: Whether social media is good or bad..

13. Planning a precis
1. Start on a rough space.
2. Write the main idea
3. Find the key-words in the text, and jot it down.
[Key words are the points on which the main idea is developed]
4. Try writing the main idea, and the key-word info. in your own words.

14. Planning a precis
5. Once finished, check:
✓You have all the keywords in the passage
✓You have NOT added anything—a data, an example, etc of your own. Every thing should
come from the passage only.

15. Planning a precis
6. Count words. It should be one-third of the total word count.
7. If you have greater word-count, reduce your first draft. Re-frame sentences.
8. Once it is of one-third word count, copy it to the main area in your answer sheet.
9. Finally, re-read to check grammatical and spelling errors.

16. Let’s attempt some precis

17. Repeat-words: Distance
education
Key words: degree while
doing job. Poor students ,
college in another city.
alternative
Purpose: to persuade. The
author wants to convince us,
distance education is good.

18. Precis:
Distance education is an alternative to college education, if you have a job, or cannot
afford leaving your city. [16 words]
Re-try: Distance-education is good for students who are on-job, or poor.[11 words]
Word-count: 44 words. Target: 14 words
We can write this, coz
we know the author is
trying to convince us the
positives of distance
education

19. Paragraph with purpose: To Inform

20. Title: Virus Surge;
Health service in India;
Beleagured
Topic Sentence: explosion
in Coronavirus cases
Topic sentence: PM wars
community transmission started.
Topic sentence: Experts
fear on certain areas

21. Topic Sentences

22. First Draft
The author reports India is preparing for a surge in Coronavirus cases.
PM has cancelled foreign trips, public festivities; shut schools; stopped
drug-exports.
Health-care providers a worried on the following grounds: not enough
hospitals, with a patient to bed ratio at 1844:1; inequality in healthcare
at places of shortage of clean water; dense population makes social
distancing ineffective; lack of pharmaceutical ingredients to make
drugs, as China-imports are halted.

23. Second draft [63 words]
The author reports that with rise in Coronavirus cases, India has adopted preventive
measures, like shutting schools, social distancing, stopping imports and exports. However,
health-care providers think these measures to be insufficient because:
1. Adverse patient: hospital bed ratio, at 1,844:1
2. Lack of overall access to clean water supply in country.
3. Social distancing is ineffective in densely populated areas
4. India doesn’t have drug ingredients due to halt in supply-line from China.
Foreign trade
3rd edit: Ineffective social-distancing in densely populated areas
3rd edit: India lacks in drug-manufacturing, as the Chinese supply-line is halted
Use punctuations
to give stats and
data in a short
way.

24. Paragraph with Purpose: to instruct / moralize

25. Topic Sentence:
imp. Of rights
and duties
Topic Sentence:
Neglect duties;
demand rights
Keywords:
Rights for self-
development;
duties for
Nations’
development.
Complain of
right denial.
Destroy public
property; Cause
losses to govt.

26. Conclusion
Topic sentence
Keywords: not
perform duties.
Pay taxes; submit
bills; attack
women in name
of traditional
culture.
Traditional
culture :
Honesty; truth,
respect elders

27. First Draft
• The author thinks that rights and duties go hand-in-hand.
• Rights ensure self-development
• Duties ensure development of others.
• We complain of not getting rights
• We neglect duties, like damaging public property while protesting; thus
causing huge loss for the government.
• Other neglect of duties include non-payment of taxes; telephone bills;
attacking on women in name of traditional culture.
• Tradition is to respect others, and be honest.
• We should do our duties carefully, just like we ask for our rights.

28. Second draft [49 words]
The author justifies the necessity of doing duties, side by side of asking
for rights. Rights ensure self-development. Duties ensure development
of others and the nation. We should not damage public properties; pay
our taxes and telephone bills on time; respect women and elders; be
honest and truthful. We should be careful both of our duties and rights.
timely
Compound
word = 1
word

29. Paragraph with purpose: To Persuade

30. Purpose: to persuade
reader of Zoom’s
benefits
Topic Sentence
Key words:
Webinar; user
friendly; record
webinars; transcripts
of webinars;
advanced features for
interactive meetings;
40 minutes for free
sessions; lack of
security

31. First draft
• Zoom is good for webinars for the following reasons:
• It is user friendly for non-technical people
• It records a webinar, and saves it in local hard drives.
• It generates transcripts of webinars, which could be used later for
books and articles.
• It has advanced features for interactive sessions.
• Some drawbacks are: 40 minute time-limit for meetings in free
version; weak security because of non-encrypted communication.
• For good webinars that are non-confidential, one should use paid
Zoom services and proper security settings. [76 words]

32. Second Draft: Target: 62 words
Zoom is good for webinars, because it is user friendly; records and saves
meetings; generates transcripts for future use; has advanced features for
interactive meetings. The two drawbacks, namely time-limitations on free
versions, and weak security, can be by-passed by using paid versions,
adjusting security settings, and avoiding confidential data. [47 words]
40 minute time-limitations for meetings in free version
weak security
because of non-encrypted communication New phrase added.
user friendly for non-technical people
records a webinar, and saves it in local hard drives.
generates transcripts of webinars, which could be used later for future use
We know this is what
the author wants: to de-
focus the negatives, and
Focus the positives of
Zoom. Than can be
done, only by giving
steps to By-pass the
negatives