How to tackle GP summary (part 2)

As promised, this is the second part of our summary series! Let’s get on to how to paraphrase your summary points.

How to paraphrase?

1. Replace the fancy descriptions with adjectives e.g. kills up to half a million people each year à deadly. If possible, use a single adjective as that would greatly save on your word count.

2. Do NOT do word for word substitution! Many students are guilty of this and end up writing unnatural-sounding and way-too-long sentences, for example:

A “universal vaccine” is the ultimate solution of vaccination efforts to stop the flu, a versatile virus which kills many people every year, reported the World Health Organisation.

Attributed to epSos.de

Remember that the goal of paraphrasing is to retain the main ideas while delivering them in the most concise and natural way possible. Your sentences have to “flow”.

That said, if you really cannot find a way to paraphrase your points then lift the whole point; but of course try and reduce the number of words. You will lose marks for language though.

Use connectors

Connectors are great way to help link your ideas and boost language marks. Here are some useful connectors and their functions:

I recommend using one-word connectors as they save on word count.

So there you have it, 6 easy steps to writing a better summary. Always remember to allocate at least 20-25 minutes for your summary so do not dilly-dally on the earlier sections. The trick is not to read the entire passage before attempting the questions, but to read only the introductory paragraph and then go straight to the questions. Find out what the question wants and scan for the answer in the passage. Doing this helps free up a lot of time for your summary and more importantly, the application question (AQ). You only have 1.5 hours to complete GP paper 2 so learn to manage your time wisely.