Summarising in five words or less

LISTENING FOR KEY INFORMATION C1-C2

It’s important that you get into the habit of learning how to summarise facts in five words or less for this part of the International ESOL test.

Read the following examples of a text with an answered question.

Pay attention to the words that are ‘key’ and those that can be omitted.

Having breakfasted early, the twins set out from John O’Groats on the cool but sunny

morning of March the twenty-sixth, to start their walk to Land’s End.

Q Date trip began: 26 March

Tip!

use numbers, not words

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Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, was the first computer programmer. She

devised a number of programs using special cards with tiny holes punched in them.

Q Method used: Cards with holes/hole-punched cards

Tip!

‘special’ and ‘tiny’ are not integral to the answer and can be omitted

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All the remaining wall-space comprised shelves, which were tightly stacked from

floor to ceiling with novels, biographies, histories, encyclopaedias, journals and

autobiographies, works of philosophy, philology and goodness knows what else.

Q Shelves contained: many/different books

Tip!

Tip: use one word, collective noun or category to cover a variety of examples

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Now listen to the short extracts on the recording and pick out the details requested below. Write answers of three words or fewer for each extract.

1 What did they do on Tuesday? __________

see answer

sightsee/sightseeing/visited tourist sites

2 Invention used for __________

see answer

bailing out/bailing out ships/bailing out water

3 Get __________

see answer

vegetables

4 Do ask __________

see answer

open-ended questions

Don’t ask __________

view answer

closed questions

5 Event in second week of January __________

view answer

menswear sale/men’s clothes sale

6 Book about __________

view answer

mushrooms/fungi

7 Lecture on __________

view answer

living without water/surviving without water

8 Hobby __________

view answer

astronomy

Click on 'view answer' and compare your answers then listen to the extracts again and look up any new vocabulary in the dictionary.

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Notes:

Listening for information

We listen to monologues of many different types – lectures, announcements, answering machine messages, etc. In Listening Part 3, you will listen to a monologue and make notes.

It will help you to prepare to answer Listening Part 3 questions if you think about the important information contained in monologues and also about the extra things people say, which we don’t need to make notes about.

How to prepare

• Listen: If you have the chance, listen to radio programmes or internet monologues as much as possible.

• Reflect: Decide what information is important and what doesn’t really need to be noted down.

• Write: Write down notes relating to the recording and then try to summarise them in one to five words.

• Reflect: Why was some information included in the notes and why was some information not important?