Read the information and do the exercises that follow.

To make a summary is to give the gist of a given text in an impersonal manner. It is no more than bringing out its hub idea and main points. Any kinds of personal evaluation or critical attitude are ruled out. Summarizing the text (резюме) comprises 2 basic operations, paraphrasing/rephrasing and generalizing (обобщение) the facts of the original text.

Reading and understanding any text is closely connected with making inferences (построение умозаключений) which are based on the information which is implicit (подразумеваемый) and is not revealed directly. The summary of a narrative can be made in the form of a brief account of the facts, events, happenings, actions described in the text (summary of the plot) or a general idea of what is being described (summary of the idea).

In terms of the language, the summary of the plot is more laconic and deprived of appreciative words and phrases.

Précis-making technique (методика реферирования текста) is based on this principle and includes the following stages:

• skimming through the original text with the aim of getting the general idea of its content;
• reading the text paragraph after paragraph and picking out the key fragments;
• the problem of telling the primary information from secondary items; to this end, compare the semantic content of various paragraphs (the subject-matter (тема, предмет обсуждения) of different paragraphs);
• making up a new text;
• editing the new text which includes:
• introduction of conjunctions and connectives (союзные слова) to make the summary logical in sequence;
• shifting separate utterances or groups of utterances following the logic of the summary;
• substituting separate words and word combinations with the view to keeping more precisely to the original text;
• introducing generalizing elements (words or word combinations) which will help to laconically render certain segments of the original;
• excluding separate elements of the text with redundant or unimportant information;
• stylistic editing of the text.

Now look at the key sentences of each paragraph and say whether they extend the main idea of the first paragraph or present new ideas with their subsequent extension.

For example, Paragraph 1: Children are reading more books than ever.

Paragraph 2: The children’s book market has come into its own. (A new idea)

In discourse (в потоке речи) language units are united by a number of lexical, grammatical and stylistic connections, the prevailing type of connection being semantic where similar or semantically similar words and expressions are united into thematic chains. Most common among them are substitutes and repetitions.

Substitutes are words or expressions which replace previously used language units and have the same meaning. Repetitions can be direct (when the same lexical unit is repeated), periphrastic (based on periphrasis) and descriptive.