Integrated Summary and Information Organization Across Passages
Kyoto's integrated tasks ask you to read two passages-or one passage plus a short text-and organize their agreement and disagreement in a summary or chart. The test is information management: what is shared, what is contested, and what each author would say about the other.
Build a comparison grid
- Column A: claim; Column B: evidence; Column C: scope or qualification.
- Mark shared assumptions and direct contradictions.
- Note the unit of comparison: causes, consequences, definitions, or remedies.
- Write the summary from the grid, not from memory.
Worked example
Passage 1: automation destroys jobs. Passage 2: automation changes tasks, so employment shifts rather than disappears. Reasoning: They agree that automation changes work; they disagree on the unit-jobs versus tasks-and therefore on the outcome. A 60-word summary: "Both passages accept that automation alters work. The first argues that it eliminates jobs, while the second claims it reorganizes tasks and shifts employment. The disagreement is thus about whether the relevant unit is the job or the task." Notice: no new opinion, no examples.
Traps
- Summarizing only one passage.
- Adding your own view.
- Copying long phrases instead of compressing.
- Missing the word limit or writing a list with no relation between items.
Check
Every sentence in a summary should contain a relation word: both, while, whereas, therefore.