Summary: squeezing eight sentences into six, and deciding what is a 'point'
A candidate is given this passage and the instruction: 'In not more than six sentences and not more than 90 words, summarise the effects of clearing the hills above Umuaja for farmland.'
'When the hills above Umuaja were cleared for farmland, the streams below ran dry within three years. Women who had once walked ten minutes to fetch water now walked an hour. The young men who cut the trees earned money for two seasons, then followed the timber camps south and did not return. The soil, stripped of shade, baked hard, and the first rains washed it into the valley. Yet the village council still sells plots on the ridge, arguing that the money pays the school fees of the children who remain.'
His draft has eight sentences and 137 words. Each sentence begins 'The writer says that...'. He includes the figures 'within three years', 'ten minutes', 'an hour', 'two seasons', and he ends with a sentence of his own opinion: 'This is very bad for our country.'
1. List the kernel points of the passage and say which of the candidate's inclusions are detail rather than point.
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Kernel points (five, one per sentence of the passage):
- Clearing the hills dried up the streams below.
- Women must now walk much further for water.
- Young men earned briefly from the timber, then migrated and did not return.
- The exposed soil hardened and was washed away by the rain.
- The council continues to sell ridge plots, justifying this by the school fees the money pays.
Detail, not point: 'within three years', 'ten minutes', 'an hour', 'two seasons'. These measure the speed and scale of effects already named; the summary can say 'quickly' or 'much further' without the figures. Dropping them frees perhaps 12 words.
The candidate's final sentence is not in the passage at all - it is his opinion, and in a summary it is a fault, not a bonus. 'The writer says that' repeated eight times wastes roughly 30 words on nothing.
One caution: the council's justification is a kernel even though it is offered ironically. The irony is tone; the reason itself is a point.
2. Rewrite the summary in exactly six sentences and under 90 words, then state the word count.
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Model:
- Clearing the hills for farmland quickly dried the streams below. (9)
- Women must now walk an hour for water. (8)
- Young men who earned briefly from the timber left and did not return. (12)
- The exposed soil hardened and rain washed it into the valley. (11)
- The council nevertheless continues to sell plots on the ridge. (10)
- It defends this by saying the money pays school fees. (10)
Total: 60 words, six sentences, all under the 90-word limit.
What the rewrite does:
- One kernel per sentence, in passage order, so the examiner can tick point by point.
- No 'the writer says that'; a summary is understood to be the writer's.
- 'Quickly' absorbs 'within three years'; the figures are gone because they are illustration.
- No opinion, no example, no quotation.
Deliberate choice: 'an hour' is kept in sentence 2 while other figures are cut, because without any measure the point shrinks to 'women walk further', which loses the scale of the change. Judgement, not mechanical deletion, decides which figure is load-bearing.
3. The draft still has two spare sentences of allowance when the candidate finishes. Should he use them? Justify your answer in terms of how summary is marked.
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No. The limit is a ceiling, not a target. Summary is marked on content points captured and on compression; extra sentences that carry no new kernel point do not add marks and create two risks.
First, padding invites error. A candidate with spare sentences tends to reach back into the passage and pull in detail - a date, a figure, an example - and detail lifted into a summary is penalised as failure to distinguish point from illustration.
Second, padding invites opinion. The spare sentence is usually where 'this is very bad for our country' appears, as it did in his draft. A summary reports what the writer says, not what the candidate thinks.
A better use of the allowance: if a kernel point came out garbled, rewrite that one sentence rather than adding a seventh. The test to apply before using a spare sentence is: 'Which kernel point does this sentence carry that no other sentence carries?' If there is no answer, the sentence goes.