SUMMARY PRACTICE 1
Read the following extract and use your own words to summarise it. Your summary should be between 100 and
120 words.
NOTE: Write total WORD COUNT and the NUMBER OF WORDS COPIED from the original for each version.
Extract 1
Developed over millennia as a way to mediate between grumpy leaders hell-bent on inflicting their own ideas on
the world, diplomacy was once thought of as an art, in the same vein as public speaking, polite conversation and
negotiation. It grew out of trade interactions in the Middle East, China and India, and incorporated a variety of skills,
philosophies and cultural nuances as it went. Throughout the majority of history, the role of the diplomat was to ensure any
interaction with another state or power remained on an even keel and avoided conflict at all costs.
Although the word ‘diplomacy’ conjures up a long-gone age of stuffy meetings between politicians and civil
servants in palaces and embassies, there is little difference in the goal of diplomacy nowadays. In the complex
relationships of modern society, whether in our personal lives, in the workplace or matters of international negotiation,
bringing back the art of diplomacy could be invaluable. It is a highly specific skill that requires people to put aside their
personal desires and work towards a common good. In this respect it is extremely challenging insofar as it involves putting
forward a case for something strongly and effectively enough for it to be considered by another party, but not in such a way
as to cause offence or irritation.
We are inclined to view diplomacy as an innate ability, something that only a select few are blessed with. Yet, with
some hard work and determination it is actually straightforward to learn. There are certain tricks of the trade that can be
useful starting places for novices. The greatest of these is the ability to understand the fragility of human nature and the
need for acceptance and for an attentive audience. Being diplomatic means acknowledging the feelings of others, taking
time to demonstrate empathy, and casting aside emotion for logic and reasonableness. It means being patient and
versatile in interpersonal communication, and, above all, a commitment to agreement and collaboration rather than
individuality and division.
Having said this, there are people who seem to naturally excel at diplomatic negotiation. These individuals are
people who have already understood the human condition in all its frailty. They believe that compromise is the only
antidote to an imperfect world. Despite the outward appearance of pessimism and negativity, they aspire to create a better
world and see great progress in small adjustments. They are the undeniable evidence that diplomacy has a lot to offer in
illuminating a path to better communication for all of us.
Summary
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Extract 2
It’s easy to think that our visual experience or the fundamental concepts within society are objectively true, and
there is good cause for this way of thinking to be desirable. However, the idea of one objective reality is more debatable
than you may think.
Our shared realities, certainly in the modern Western world, are centred on material things that we can touch, the
objectivity of science and humans, and our individual growth. Before the Industrial Revolution, almost all western societies
saw reality as quite a different set of concepts. Their worlds depended on things that today we might consider ‘unreal’,
such as entities that control nature, and humans’ lives were dictated by this. It was considered in the same way that we
regard science today.
However, reality is deeper than just a set of shared beliefs - reality is also a set of truths. The idea that there are
‘known facts’ and ‘unknown facts’ is something with which we all should probably reconcile ourselves in the modern world.
While it is useful for looking up undisputed knowledge, there is also much more dubious information out there. This is
evidenced in doctored photos or misrepresented figures that are placed online, and some people take this misinformation
as fact, simply because they have blindly trusted it to be true, or because it has confirmed a belief that they already held.
Even our senses do not escape from this controversy surrounding an objective reality. One key example of this is
the placebo effect, which not only occurs in medical or clinical trials, but in everyday situations too. Even our vision, as
cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman explains, often misrepresents the truth to us because our brains have to make sense of
the received visual data. Optical illusions provide further evidence of how our brains organise visuals to offer some kind of
meaning that is essentially false.
So, whatever our experience of the world, the signs are that it is filled with subjectivity in a way that perhaps we
didn’t quite imagine before. Science moves on and theories that once were taken as fact are disproved, our beliefs are
subject to the modern world we live in and its values, the internet is littered with untruths, and our minds can play tricks on
us. Therefore, to be as bold as to say ‘our way is best’ is perhaps a little conceited. We know as much as our brains allow
and our physical context tells us.
Summary
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Extract 3
It is commonly believed that in the United States that school is where people to get an education. Nevertheless, it
has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling and education
implied by this remark is important.
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It can take
place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal
leaning that takes place in school sand the whole universe of informal leaning. The agents of education can range from a
revered grandparent o the people debating politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas
schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with stranger may
lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on.
Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school,
and one that should be an integral part of one's entire life.
Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to
the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught
by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned,
whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of governments, have usually been limited by the
boundaries of the subject being taught. For example, high schools students know that they are not likely to find out in their
classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with.
There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.
Summary
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