Summary: selecting for a parent audience
A candidate is preparing a 120-word summary of a 600-word article about a city bike-share scheme for a school newsletter read by students and parents. The article gives: launch date; 200 bikes at 15 stations; cost €1 per hour, with the first 30 minutes free; three minor accidents in the first month; council funding of €250,000; environmental benefits; complaints that docking stations block pavements; a quote from a cyclist; and plans to expand to 30 stations next year. The task says: 'Summarise the information about the scheme that would be most useful to students and parents. Omit political background and council budget details.' The candidate's draft begins 'This article is about a bike-share scheme' and then lists every number in the order they appear, including the €250,000 funding and the three accidents. It is 138 words. They have 20 minutes left.
1. Explain why the draft fails the selective-retrieval requirement and suggest a criterion for deciding what to include.
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The draft fails because it treats the article as a list of facts to be compressed, not as information for a specified audience. The task names students and parents and asks for what is most useful to them; the council's €250,000 funding and the political background are explicitly excluded. Including every number in article order also wastes the word limit on details that do not help a family decide whether to use the scheme. A workable criterion is: include only information that affects a student's or parent's decision to use, pay for, or travel to the scheme-cost, free period, locations, safety, and expansion. Omit budget, politics, and quotations unless they change that decision. The draft's opening 'This article is about...' also wastes words; a summary should start with the scheme itself.
2. Rewrite the summary in no more than 120 words, using your criterion. Show your word count.
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A new bike-share scheme offers 200 bikes at 15 stations, with plans to expand to 30 next year. Students and parents can hire a bike for €1 per hour, and the first 30 minutes are free. Three minor accidents have been reported in the first month, so users should take care. Some docking stations have been criticised for blocking pavements. The scheme is intended to bring environmental benefits, but families should check station locations before relying on it for daily journeys. (81 words)
3. How would you signal omission without sounding incomplete?
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Do not announce what you are leaving out. Select and group instead. A topic sentence such as 'For families, the key details are cost, locations and safety' signals a criterion without apologising. If a detail is important but outside the brief, you can fold it into a clause: 'The scheme is council-funded, but the details most relevant to users are...' However, this costs words and may reintroduce excluded material. Better to trust the selection: a summary is judged on relevance, not on completeness.