6. Understanding the task

You are going to write a summary of a magazine article about self-motivation Your summary should be about a third of the length of the original article. First read the article and ask yourself questions about it, then make notes on what you consider to be the most important areas of information.

Get motivated

Do you ever suspect that people are taking advantage of you? Do you feel that you have been undervalued or your efforts go unappreciated? Do you ever kick yourself because you haven't achieved the things you wanted to?

Well, now is the time to get motivated! People who are highly self-motivated never sit back and let luck take over the driving seat of their lives. They make plans - not just for big projects but for everyday tasks as well. They plan what they are going to buy before they go shopping and they plan what they are going to say should someone call.

Good plans keep us motivated because they stop us feeling overwhelmed, and, at the same time, they make us undoubtedly much more efficient at almost everything we do. Planning ahead is always to our advantage.

Of course, even the most carefully constructed plan must sometimes be put aside, especially if an unexpected stroke of bad luck or good fortune happens to come our way. The secret is to be adaptable!

7. Planning

Follow the five-point plan to help you write a summary.

1. Decide which parts of the text are important.

2. Use adjectives, adverbs, link words, and adverb clauses to shorten or combine information.

3. Rephrase the text using your own words where possible.

4. Do not add your own personal views and opinions.

5. Decide what logical order to put your information in.

8. Writing

Read each sentence as you write to make sure that your summary:

• reads smoothly.

• makes sense without reading the original as well.

• includes all the main information.

9. Checking

As you write check that you have:

• made your summary approximately one third of the original article.

• not repeated information unnecessarily.

• used language economically where possible.

Appendix 5.

Presentation Signpost Expressions

Starting

Good morning/afternoon/evening (everyone, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues)

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak here today.

I am honored to have the opportunity to share our research with you here today.

I am happy to have this chance to speak to you (all) today about...

Introducing the topic

Today I’m going to talk about...

As you can see, I’m here today to talk to you about...

Explaining the structure

(Especially important if the structure of your talk is a little different from normal, or you have a very long presentation with many parts).

I’ve divided my presentation into two/three/four/several parts.

First, I’ll explain XXX and then I’ll move onto talk about...

Showing respect for listener’s knowledge

As you may know,

As you can see,

As you may be aware,

I know many of you are familiar with...

Many of you may have performed...

I am sure, you are all familiar with X’s work on

Moving from section to section

So let me start by... explaining the background

So I’ll start with...

Right, so first...

Well moving onto...

Next I’ll talk about...

Right, was that clear? So I’ll move onto...

Well, what does this all mean? So what is the significance of this?

Let’s take a moment to look at a few other reports...

So what have other people said about this?

OK, so what’s next...

Right, I’ll introduce/share our materials and methods.

So finally,

That brings us to my last point.

Looking at visuals

Now let’s look at...

May I focus your attention on the table / chart/ figure

You’ll notice that...

OK so you can see a summary of our results here...

Underlining points

Please remember that...

It’s important to remember that...

This is important/significant because...

You’re probably thinking that... and you’re right/ but this would be a mistake...

Please notice that...

Note this point:

Referring backwards and forwards

You remember I said...

Just to repeat what I said earlier,

As I mentioned earlier...

Do you remember I said...?

I’ll talk more about this later.

Don’t worry if this isn’t so clear now, I’ll explain the details later...

More on this later on.

The details will come later.

Can I come back to this point?

Referring to study weaknesses

You may be able to see the weaknesses in our study.

Of course our study cannot conclusively say that...

We need to look at X in more detail and a further study with Y might confirm our findings.

Summarizing

OK, so in summary...

So where does this leave us? Well we need to

We can agree that...

Our main point is that

We have raised the following questions:

We believe our study presents conclusive proof that...

We believe our presentation raises many questions about...

Finishing up:

I hope my rather rapid explanation was clear.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you for listening.

Well that’s all from me today. It’s been a great pleasure to share this with you today.

Thank you very much.

Starting question-time

I’ll be happy to answer questions...

If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.

Does anyone have any questions?

OK, so question time! Anyone...?

Unfortunately we seem to have run out of time. If anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to try to answer them privately.../ you can see my email address here...

Responding to tricky questions

Thank you... it’s a good question and one we are trying to address in our follow up studies.

Ah yes. That occurred to us too. We tried to account for it by...

I’m afraid I have no idea! Perhaps we can look at that in more detail in a follow up study. Do you have any suggestions?

Let me check I understand you clearly. Do you mean...?

So do you mean...?

So are you saying...?

Could you repeat that?

I didn’t quite catch that...

I’m not sure I’m following you...

I’m afraid my English is failing me.

Ah... I’m afraid I don’t have that information with me now. If I can get your email address after this session, I’ll mail it to you.

Appendix 6.