ENGLISH LANGUAGE

COMPREHENSION OF GIVEN PASSAGES

Word ‘comprehension’ means the ability to understand what you listen to or what you read.
The most essential requirement for understanding the passage is to know the meaning of the words used in it.

Types of comprehensive passage

• Factual passage: A factual passage contains 300 to 350 words. It is a detailed description in which some information is added along with a detailed description of physical attributes. A good factual passage describes the reader to compare or contrast the relevant information regarding facts, data, etc.

• Discursive passage: A discursive passage contains a text which is either argumentative or interpretative or persuasive in nature. They may also include opinions or feedback.

Requisite skills of Comprehensive passage

To develop a better level of comprehension one requires certain skills:

• Logical ability
• The ability to infer
• Analytical ability
• Reasoning ability
• Ability to understand the main motive or the idea of the author.
• Reading speed
• Vocabulary power
• Remembering some important information from the paragraph otherwise, we need to refer the paragraph again and again which will consume more time.

PRECISE WRITING

Precis Writing is a summary. It is an exercise of compression. A precis writing is a gist of any passage in as few words as possible.

Guidelines for precise writing

• Closely read the passage, and identify the central idea of the passage. It is vital to identify the general idea of the passage and incorporate it in one’s précis.
• Look-out for the total number of words. If the number is not provided, quickly calculate the number using approximations.
• In order to understand the passage clearly, make sure that you read the passage closely, and give it a couple of reads before you start writing the précis.
• Highlight the most important points in the passage, and make notes. Leave out all non-essential information from the précis.
• Provide an apt heading to your précis.
• Note making is an essential task for writing précis. You should try to arrange the points in most logical order, and ensure the order of thought is the same as the original.
• The three grammatical rules you need to follow while writing a précis are: write it in third person, indirect form and appropriate past tense.
• It is advisable to provide designations of officials rather than names and titles. In case the official designation is not provided, you can use the personal name. Kindly be consistent with the pattern you adopt.
• Make sure you review your rough draft, remove the chinks and ensure that you have made no language related errors.
• Before writing your précis, make sure you have a glance over the original to make sure you have not missed anything.
• Finally, a wise policy would be to count the words of your precis and put them down in a bracket at the end.

QUALITIES OF GOOD PRECIS

• Objectivity:
   Objectivity means how you are presenting your facts and views without it being biasing your feelings or personal opinions. In stricter terms, precis writing should be a summary of the passage or text given to you. It should not include your personal idea or opinions.
• Clarity:
  A precis is the crisp formation of the passage and it should be as crisp and clear as possible. Clarity is essentially getting your ideas loud and clear without writing it in depth. It should convey what the writer is trying to say. 
• Coherence:
  It clearly means that ideas and views that you have presented should be logical and the interconnection of the ideas should be proper. 
• Correctness:
  There are many mistakes that you should avoid while writing a precis. Many such mistakes include mistakes in figures and dates, the spelling of words, punctuation mistakes, structure and grammar mistakes, and many more. 
• Conciseness:
  Conciseness means that the precis should contain all the information required while not mentioning it in depth. It should not be too long either too short and both of these should not have any impact while writing a precis.
• Completeness:
   It should include as many things as possible and more importantly the facts. In fact, a good one should be able to produce all the facts while being short. A short precis does not mean avoiding important facts. Also, the important thing that you should remember is it should be a summary and not a short description of the passage.
  

Points to Avoid for Precis Writing

• Do not elaborate a lot on a single point.
• Do not use your own interpretation, criticism,  or assumption about the text.
• Do not copy sentences from the original text or use abbreviations.
• Do not break the flow of events and keep the text well connected.

USAGE AND VOCABULARY

Usage is the act of using something. Vocabulary is all about words — the words in a language or a special set of words you are trying to learn.

SHORT ESSAYS

An essay is typically a short, non-fiction piece of writing.

Guidelines for short essays

• Each short essay should be a short essay of approximately 500 words, about 2 typewritten double-spaced pages in length. 
• You must write in full sentences and use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. 
• Your essay should answer the assigned question, drawing on the relevant reading assignment. 
• It is very important to deal with what the author says about the question, not simply with what you think.  (However, you may contrast your own opinion with the author’s, offer a critique of her argument, etc.  But this requires that you start by setting out the author’s position.)
• Even though you are dealing with the author’s view about the question, you need to express it in your own words. 
• Extended quotations of the text are inappropriate in an assignment of this length, and even short quotations require your analysis (e.g., you will need to explain what the sentence you have quoted means, how it bears on the question, etc.).
• Misrepresenting the words or ideas of others as your own is plagiarism. 
• You will not receive credit for any essays that contain plagiarism,.
• Moreover, it is course policy that plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the course and the possibility of further administrative sanctions. 
• If you are completely unsure of what the author is claiming or how it bears on the question you have been asked to answer, you should write a brief essay on what the author seems to be claiming, why it does not make sense to you, and what two questions you might ask the author to help you understand his view.
• Short essays are due at the beginning of lecture. 
•  No late reading responses will be accepted.  Of the 4 reading responses assigned, your lowest grade will be dropped from the average.