1.

Reading Comprehension and Summary

1.1 Teachers Notes

1 Ask the students to read the summary question first (Question 31) before they
read the passage in Section C. The summary question normally allows them
to get some ideas of what the passage is all about. It is an advantage for
weak students to know the general idea of the passage before they read it.
Teachers must remind the students that they should not write the summary
first but after reading the summary question, they should read the passage
and answer all the comprehension questions.
2. Advise the students to read the passage paragraph by paragraph. After
reading each paragraph, they should read and try to answer the question that
is based on that paragraph. By doing so, the students will be more focused in
finding the correct answer.
3. Students should be able to identify the keywords in each question. The
keywords will be clues for them to find the correct answer in the passage.
4. Students should only copy out the sentence from the text once they have
identified the sentence containing the answer. Of course, they must also be
reminded that pronouns such as I, me, mine, my, our, us and ours must be
changed accordingly.
5. Students must be taught to differentiate a word and a phrase. So, if there is a
question asking for a word, they must only write a word for their answer. On
the other hand, if they are supposed to write a phrase, they must only write
down a group of words which is not a complete sentence such as
uncomplicated deIivery or indispensable part of our lives. Similarly, if the
question requires students to write words as the answer, teachers should
guide students to copy a part of a sentence. Make sure they do not lift the
whole sentence. In short, teachers must ensure students are aware of the
differences of these terms: word, words, phrase and sentence.
6. Students must attempt to check the accuracy of all their answers.
1.2 Students Tips

1. Students must understand the requirement/s of the summary.

2. Students must mark the lines where the summary starts and ends.
3. Students should know that the first 3 lines normally contain the first point or at
least a content point.
4. Students must refer to the summary requirement/s before they finally copy out
any sentence as their content point. They must be encouraged to question
themselves accordingly such as by asking Is this a danger he faced? or Is
this how they solved their problems?. The questions they pose to themselves
are their guide in selecting the relevant and accurate content points.
5. When students have picked a sentence as their content point, they should
copy the sentence completely to avoid any distortion of meaning.
6. For weak or very weak students, they may copy the longest paragraph up to
130 words. By doing so, they should be able to score several marks for
content points.
7. Students must also copy the punctuations accurately as they appear in the
passage.