Summary Under Pressure: Eleven Points, One Hundred and Thirty Words
In Paper 1, Section B, you are writing a summary of a six-paragraph article titled 'Farming Above the City'. The question asks only for the benefits of rooftop farming. You have 25 minutes left and have underlined 11 candidate points: three on lower transport emissions, two on money saved by reducing air-conditioning, two on neighbours sharing tools, two on government grants for start-up costs, one on fresher vegetables, and one on the fact that the roof was previously unused. The summary must be 130 words or fewer. Your draft is 138 words. One sentence you copied reads: 'Rooftop gardens can lower a building's internal temperature by as much as 5°C, cutting air-conditioning bills.' You are unsure whether to keep it, cut it, or rewrite it, and you still have to check the final word count before the invigilator says pens down.
1. You can keep only eight points. Which three do you cut, and what single question should decide each cut?
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The deciding question is: 'Does this point answer what good comes from rooftop farming, and does it add a new idea?' Apply it in this order:
- Cut the 'roof was previously unused' point. It is a fact about the site, not a benefit.
- Cut one of the two government-grant points. The two say the same thing twice, so keeping both wastes words; if you keep one, phrase it as help with start-up costs.
- Cut one of the three transport-emission points. Again, it is repetition, not a new benefit.
That leaves eight points: two emissions, two air-conditioning savings, two tool-sharing, fresh vegetables, and one grant point. Do not cut a point merely because it is hard to paraphrase; cut on relevance and overlap. This is a judgement about what the question asks, not a memory test.
2. Rewrite the temperature sentence in your own words and explain where paraphrase ends and copying begins.
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A possible rewrite: 'Roof gardens can cool a building by up to 5°C, so less air-conditioning is needed.' This keeps the key idea (cooling) and the figure (5°C) but changes the grammar and most of the vocabulary. It is not enough to swap 'lower' for 'reduce' and 'cutting' for 'lowering'; that is still copying with a new coat of paint. A useful self-check is to cover the original, say the idea aloud in your own words, then write that version. The number and the technical term 'air-conditioning' may stay because there is no exact synonym, but the surrounding wording must be yours. Examiners reward a genuine reshaping of the idea, not word substitution.
3. Your draft is 138 words and the limit is 130. What do you cut first, and what must you never cut to save words?
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Cut in this order: examples that do not carry a content point, repeated modifiers such as 'very' and 'really', and long lead-ins such as 'One of the benefits is that'. Do not cut the main benefits, the linking words that show how points relate, or the sentence that directly answers the question. A shorter summary that loses a content point scores worse than a tight one that keeps all the points. Check how your exam board counts hyphenated words and numbers; if you are at 131, rewrite one phrase rather than deleting a whole point. Finish with two minutes to count, not one.