Summarise a short text in English without adding your own opinions

The Open University's lesson on what makes a summary distinguishes accurate reporting of the writer's facts and views from adding your own opinion. A summary shortens the material while retaining its meaning.

For speaking practice, try making four brief notes before you talk:

• Where did the information come from?
• What is the main development or argument?
• Which qualification would change the meaning if you removed it?
• What remains unknown?

These are preparation questions, not four sentences you must always say. A short notice may need only two sentences. A disagreement between several people may need more space because their views must remain separate.

Imagine you are telling a friend about this fictional neighbourhood newsletter item:

"Oak Street Library is testing a quiet reading hour on Wednesday mornings for four weeks. During that hour, visitors are asked to silence their phones and keep conversations outside the reading room. The children's story session will continue in a separate room. Librarian Mina Patel hopes the trial will help visitors who find the main room distracting. One regular visitor, Tom Ellis, says Wednesday mornings are inconvenient for people who work. The library will collect comments before deciding whether to continue the quiet hour."

Read it twice if needed. You do not have to memorise the names. Focus on the experiment, the stated purpose, and the decision that has not happened yet.

Now consider this attempted summary:

"The library has introduced permanent quiet mornings because visitors couldn't concentrate. Everyone likes the change, but children's activities have been cancelled."

The grammar is understandable. The information is wrong.

Compare each claim with the notice. Don't correct a sentence just because you would phrase it differently. Find an actual mismatch.

Attempted claim	What the notice supports
Permanent quiet mornings	A four-week trial on Wednesday mornings
Visitors couldn't concentrate	The librarian hopes to help visitors who find the room distracting
Everyone likes the change	One visitor objects to the timing; no overall approval is reported
Children's activities cancelled	The story session continues in another room

A faithful short version could be:

"The neighbourhood newsletter says Oak Street Library is trying a quiet reading hour on Wednesday mornings for four weeks. The librarian hopes it will help people who find the room distracting, but one visitor questions the timing. The library hasn't decided whether to keep it."

This version leaves out the phone rule and the children's session. For a general update, that is a reasonable choice. It does not replace those details with different ones.

If your friend takes a child to the story session, include the information about the separate room. What you keep depends partly on the listener's question. Accuracy still applies to every version.

Compare these two sentences:

"Wednesday mornings are inconvenient."

"One visitor says Wednesday mornings are inconvenient for people who work."

The first sounds like your assessment or a general fact. The second identifies whose view you are reporting and who the concern affects. You can shorten a sentence without removing that distinction.

Useful openings include "The writer argues that...", "The notice says...", and "One person quoted in the article thinks..." Choose the one that matches the source. A notice announcing a trial does not necessarily argue for a policy. One quoted person does not represent everyone.

For this exercise, ordinary verbs such as "says" and "hopes" are enough. You do not need a more impressive synonym if it changes the strength of the claim. "Proves" would be wrong here: the notice reports no results.

Put the notice out of sight and speak from your brief notes. Aim for a compact update, perhaps around half a minute, but don't speed through it to beat a timer. That time is a practice choice, not a rule for all summaries.

Listen with the original visible. For each sentence you said, locate the passage that supports it. Pay particular attention to "all", "always", "will", and "because". In this example, those words could accidentally turn one person's view into a consensus, a trial into a permanent arrangement, or a hope into a proven effect.

If you notice an error, record the correction directly: "I said it was permanent. It's actually a four-week trial." Practise correcting a wrong detail while speaking English if restarting the whole recording is becoming a habit.

Then make a second recording. Compare the information, not just the number of pauses. A smoother version that still invents a cancelled story session is not a successful revision.

After the summary, you might say:

"Personally, I'd like an evening option too."

That is a reasonable reaction to the fictional notice. Keep it separate from what the library announced. A listener should not leave thinking that evening sessions are planned.

With a partner, ask what they understood before showing them the source. Can they tell you whether the arrangement is permanent? Do they know whether the trial has results yet? If their answer differs from the notice, look together at the sentence that led them there. You may have omitted an essential qualification, or they may have misunderstood a phrase.

For your next attempt, choose a short public announcement on a different topic. Avoid a text whose main point you cannot explain even with the page open. Clarify unfamiliar words first, then practise shortening the message. This exercise checks faithful reporting; it does not establish whether the original announcement itself is true.