The Precis That Is Accurate but Too Long
A passage of 420 words argues that urban green spaces reduce summer temperatures, lower stress, and increase property values, but that these benefits are unevenly distributed because poorer districts receive less funding. It contains three examples, two quotations from a city planner, a rhetorical question, and a final sentence warning that 'greening without equity is gentrification with a garden'. The task requires a precis of about one-third of the original length (roughly 140 words) in the candidate's own words. The candidate's draft is 210 words, keeps one quotation verbatim, retains all three examples, and opens with 'The passage is about...'.
1. Diagnose every way the draft violates precis conventions and state the correction for each.
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Four violations. (1) Length: 210 words is half the passage, not a third; the target is about 140, so roughly 70 words must go. (2) Verbatim quotation: a precis must be in the candidate's own words; the planner's quotation should be converted to reported substance or dropped if it is illustrative only. (3) Retention of all three examples: examples are supporting detail, and a precis keeps the central idea plus its main supporting points; one example at most, or none if the claim is clear without it. (4) The opening formula: 'The passage is about...' wastes words on framing and signals summary rather than precis; open directly with the proposition, e.g. 'Urban green space delivers environmental and social benefits that funding patterns distribute unequally.' The rhetorical question is also discarded, since it carries tone, not content.
2. Write a model precis of about 140 words and then explain, sentence by sentence, what was kept and what was dropped and why.
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Model precis (139 words): Urban green spaces cool cities, reduce stress and raise property values, but these benefits reach wealthy districts more than poor ones because funding follows political influence rather than need. Where poorer areas do receive investment, improved amenities can attract wealthier residents and displace the original community, so the environmental gain becomes a social loss. The passage therefore argues that greening programmes must be planned together with equity measures - affordable housing protection, community control of new spaces, and funding formulas weighted toward deprived districts - if the benefits are to be shared. Without such safeguards, the author warns, urban greening risks becoming a mechanism of gentrification rather than of public health. The central claim is conditional: green space is beneficial, but only equitable provision converts that benefit into justice.
Kept: the three benefit categories compressed into one clause; the unequal-funding cause; the gentrification risk; the conditional conclusion. Dropped: all three named examples (illustrative), both quotations (voice, not argument), the rhetorical question (tone), and the original metaphor, which was replaced by its plain meaning. Each dropped item was tested with one question: does removing it change the argument's logic? If not, it goes.