大学英语专业写作Precis.ppt

The Précis A précis is a clear concise, orderly summary of the contents of a piece of writing. * How do you pronounce this strange word? Pray-see. I used to pray to see, until I got my glasses…now I can see everything just fine! Hah-hah, never let anyone tell you an owl can’t be funny. * that is a concentration of ideas from the original piece of writing that is boiled down so that only the essence of the original remains A précis is a passage: * A précis is a brief summary, written in your own words, of a longer piece of writing. It is a condensed version of the essential content of the original material. A précis contains no comments, no opinions of your own. It contains no details, no examples, no illustrations. The language should be clear and concise, with all the unnecessary words left out. It should be the shortest possible account of what you have read. * Places where a précis could be used include: To shorten or summarize: newspaper articles, legal papers and laws, rules and regulations, announcements, directions, business letters, speeches and conversations, interviews, books magazine articles, lectures * Step 1 Count the number of words in the original-your précis is 10—15% the length of the original. Understand first.Read the original piece carefully, and more than once! Before you begin to summarize, you must first understand what is being said! WHAT? You mean I have to write a précis? How do I do that? You should annotate the article as you are reading it to understand the structure and how each paragraph contributes to the whole article. * Step 2: Sentence condensing Understand the central idea of each sentence. Cross out unneeded description. Summarize each sentence of the article Look at the example on the right. “There is no icon in Canadian business more universally revered than Tim Hortons”. Would become Tim Hortons is a revered Canadian icon OR Tim Hortons is an icon in Canada (even shorter) * Step 3: Use a diction