Students Book

0 Write
a Read the summary of the text in Exercise 1. Is it a good summary or not?
For your portfolio
I thought this text was very
interesting. It’s about four people in
London who have decided that they want to do
nice things and to get other people to do nice
things too. One example of this is that they
persuaded companies to give them £250,000
worth of toys and food, which they then gave
away to poorer people using a bus. They say
that it is quite easy to do this – all you need
to do is make lots of phone calls to companies
until you get to talk to someone who is friendly.
Then they give you things that you can give
away.
The four men started working together a year
ago with their ‘Kindness Offensive’. Many
people didn’t really trust them at first, but now
it’s OK. They say that they are trying to help
people to be nicer and to trust other people
more. So far they have helped many different
kinds of people, including giving a lot of food
to asylum seekers in the UK – the men say
that these people are treated very badly and
need a lot of help to become full members of
society, which is what they want to be but they
can’t because they can’t get jobs or buy food.
The ‘Kindness Offensive’ people are not trying
to make themselves well-known or famous, they
are just trying to get more people to see that
it is possible to be kind to other people.
b Read the summary again and check
the following:
1 Does it include the key points
from each paragraph of the text in
Exercise 1?
2 Is it factually correct?
3 Is there any extra information that
isn’t in the original text?
c Re-write the summary in Exercise
10a. Improve the summary, using the
guide below to help you.
When writing a summary, read the
text and make notes about the main
ideas.
Read the text again. Underline the
key points in each paragraph.
Write the summary. Make sure you
cover all the key points.
Check that all your facts are correct.
It is OK to use a few phrases
verbatim (word for word) but don’t
copy longer pieces of text.
When paraphrasing, try not to repeat
the same words too often (see ‘nice’
in the summary above). Use the same
word as appears in the text if you
can’t think of a good alternative.
Don’t include your personal opinion
in a summary (see the first line of the
summary above).
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UNIT 8