Writing practice

A summary is a brief restatement in your own words of the main idea of a passage, article or entire book. When you write a summary, you should be careful not to leave out important points or misrepresent an author's intention. Before you write your summary, make sure that you thoroughly understand your source. As you reread a source, pay careful attention to topic sentences, headings, or key-words that will help clarify the source's meaning. Your summary should present the important ideas of the original without using the exact language or phrasing. Notice that the summary is much shorter than the original and gives just the main idea of the text.

Make use of the following standard phrases and expressions while writing your summary

the article is called... = the title of the article is ...	статья называется.., статья озаглавлена,,,
the article is published in ...	статья опубликована в…
the article is about/on	статья повествует о …
is devoted to	посвящена
is concerned with	касается
deals with	имеет дело с…
touches upon the problem of	затрагивает проблему
in the introductory part of the article the author points out	во вводной части статьи автор указывает
the following facts are stressed in the article	в статье акцентируется внимание /подчеркивается
the article contains useful information on ...	статья содержит полезную информацию о …
in concluding paragraphs it is pointed out that	в заключительной части статьи указывается, что..
the article contains statistics about...	содержит статистику о…
the reader's attention is drawn to...	внимание читателя привлечено к…

TEANSITIONAL WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS:

first of all/at first/ second/secondly/

then/ besides that/next/ in conclusion/ finally.

Study notes on developing reading skills

Reading is the most important skill for a learner of Science English. When you learn a foreign language, your reading may INTENSIVE or EXTENSIVE.

Intensive reading is decoding the message of a text. In this case your attention is focused on the linguistic features. Intensive reading deals with the study of grammatical and lexical features of the language which help you to decode the message. To overcome grammatical and lexical difficulties while reading you often turn to grammar reviews and rules or consult a dictionary. The major objective of intensive reading is developing the ability to decode messages.

In extensive reading your approach is similar to that of reading in the native tongue. You read directly for meaning, for information. You actually learn to read by reading. Extensive reading is much more important for a university graduate. The major objective of extensive reading is developing the ability to extract the necessary information from a text. You should not worry much about all the words you don't understand as long as you get the major outline of the reading. Extensive reading is primarily intended for your personal needs, personal interests and enjoyment.Students’ of English extensive reading skills will stay with them long after they have finished their formal studies at college or university.

There are three types of extensive reading:

• PREVIEWING

• HIGHLIGHTING

• ANNOTATING

When previewing an article /or a book/ you SKIM a text (read it quickly noting only chief points), or SCAN a text (read it quickly for specific information).

In SKIMMING and SCANNING a text you look for such signals as headlines, summaries (usually called ABSTRACTS in journal articles), introductory and concluding paragraphs, repeated key words and key terms, pictures, names, places and numbers. A quick look at all these signals will help you to find out the information that may be important to you.

While skimming or scanning a text you also rely on its division into PARAGRAPHS. Most paragraphs have a TOPIC SENTENCE that summarizes the content of the whole paragraph. It is usually the first sentence in the paragraph, but not always. If you find out the topic sentences of an article, you can get its general idea.

HIGHLIGHTING is reading carefully in order to identify not only the key points of a text but also the relationship of one point to another. For this purpose you should give special attention to TRANSITIONAL WORDS that help to connect ideas. Highlighting is necessary, if you are going to make an oral report in class or write a paper.

ANNOTATING is very active reading. It means that you react to what you read. You record these reactions as annotations:

That's a very interesting point

I can't agree with this point

I don't think the author is right here

What the author mentions here is worth remembering

I think I should follow the advice the author gives

I don't understand the reasons the author gives for...

My understanding of this term is a bit different

Exercise 1. Re-read TEXT B and

1) find out TOPIC SENTENCES and TRANSITIONAL WORDS;

2) write short SUMMARY of TEXT B, start with SCANNING the principal statements;

3) write your own variant of ANNOTATION

UNIT 2

PRE-TEXT TASK

Study carefully the meanings of the following word combinations to avoid any difficulty in understanding TEXT A.

1	he was the first to show in a convincing way	он был первым, кто убедительно показал...
2	general arts	(зд). гуманитарные науки
3	science subjects	естественные науки
4	spent much time out in the field	проводил много времени на природе
5	day by day account	(зд).дневник путешествия
6	…lay in not only accumulating evidence…	заключался не только в том, чтобы собрать данные
7	Darwin referred to this evolutionary mechanism as...	Дарвин рассматривал этот эволюционный механизм как...
8	available environment ~	(зд.) существующая окружающая среда
9	deliberate selection	целенаправленный отбор

T E X T A