How to write a summary

HOW TO WRITE A SUMMARY

What you MUST do

• reduce the size of the text to a third or a quarter = your summary has to be 25% or 33% of the original text
• focus on the essential information contained in the text :

• you must be able to report about the text to someone who will never have access to it to confirm what you say
• this implies that you are able to say everything about the text in your own words

• answer these 2 questions as you read the text:

• what is the text about: the answer is the beginning of your summary
• what is the main information: the answer is what you need to say to cover the whole text

• take down notes after each paragraph: this will help you rephrase the text in short sentences
• write a summary structured in short paragraphs

What you must NOT do

• copy the text
• quote the text or use the quotes of the text
• begin your summary with ‘this article from the Guardian was published…’ 
• read the text too many times as this will prevent you from finding your own way to report about the text = you will be prisoner of the text and unable to use your own words

Now, read the text below and pay attention to my notes and to what I have put in bold type and in italics:

The Guardian view on the gig economy : time to get serious about casual work

Often insecure and lowly paid, work for Hermes, Deliveroo and others must be made secure and made to pay.

Editorial

The Guardian, 13 September 2016

1. Let us begin with a paradox: more people are in work than at any time in British history, yet British workers rank among the most insecure and stressed in Europe. They want more hours and better pay. Key to all of this is an apparently new kind of employer, fuelled by billions in venture capital and marked by a new precarity among the people who work for them. The big names are well known to many of us. They deliver packages and takeaways up and down the country and pick up customers who want a lift. They include delivery group Hermes – which, it was revealed this week, faces a probe by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs – Deliveroo and Uber.

• UK economy is flourishing
• Growth driven by new type of employer, like for example Hermes, Deliveroo and Uber

2. Such businesses are often referred to as the “gig economy”, a term that summons up images of groovy, footloose, free-spirited work. The reality is far more pedestrian and often straightforwardly grim. This is piecework, in which drivers and couriers are paid by the ride or the drop. The wages are highly variable and the protections are threadbare. Some workers might welcome the flexibility and the stepping-stone to better opportunities. For others the gig economy is a trap – a poverty trap.

• gig economy : advantages  (trendy, fashionable, modernist)+ disadvantages (low salaries, low social/work protection)

3. Two months ago, the Guardian found that some couriers for Hermes were getting paid less than a living wage. Peter Jamieson, a driver for the company, recounted how his wife was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and he asked to swap delivery days on his rounds so he could attend her hospital appointments. “They told me everyone has problems … and I would never work for Hermes again … there was no compassion,” he said.

• example, not to be used in summary
• just meant to illustrate what the journalist has explained before

4. The gig economy includes some big names and has drawn in major investment; Hermes commands a fleet of 10,500 couriers such as Mr Jamieson. Deliveroo, which has also been hit by wildcat strikes by drivers, is one of the best-funded startups in Europe. Out of the 2.6 million people who have gained a new job since David Cameron moved into No 10, more than a third – 900,000 – were classed as self-employed. Many of these were not would-be Richard Bransons and Alan Sugars – they were going off into the gig economy. Statisticians do not have a clue about the scale or the scope of the gig economy, just as they do not know precisely how many workers are on a zero-hours contract, that other totem of the new jobs market.

...