Analyzing the information you gathered

Evaluate and revise the abridged version of the original to make sure that you have covered the main ideas. Make the necessary corrections or changes.

While your summary should be complete, it should also be brief. The usual rule is that a precis should be no more than one third the length of the original. There should be a practice of reducing 1,000 words to 200—100 depending on the original text, its content, organization, and style.

Revise your summary until it is approximately one third or less the lot the original.

Writing a draft of the target language precis.

Translate the selected parts of the source text into the target language and write the target language draft of your precis.

Remember to follow the pattern of organization used in the original article. A good precis should state the main ideas clearly and briefly and present them in the same order used in the original article, и target language precis should not be a random sequence of unrelated sentences, but a well-structured piece of writing. The text should hang together in a cohesive and coherent textual flow, there should be logical and formal connection between its parts.

Your audience will affect the way in which you write the summary. For some audiences you may have to define terms, use less difficult vocabulary, or give some background information.

Evaluating and Revising.

Like any other draft, the draft of your precis can probably be, improved. Evaluate your draft by reexamining its content, organization and style to locate its strong points and weak points. If possible, put your draft precis aside for several hours or a day before you evaluate¹ it (so that you see it more objectively). Skim once more the article you summarized, this time comparing your summary with it.

Use the following Guidelines to evaluate your precis.