Understanding the task

You are going to write a summary of a magazine article about self-motivation Your summary should be about a third of the length of the original article. First read the article and ask yourself questions about it, then make notes on what you consider to be the most important areas of information.

Get motivated

Do you ever suspect that people are taking advantage of you? Do you feel that you have been undervalued or your efforts go unappreciated? Do you ever kick yourself because you haven't achieved the things you wanted to?

Well, now is the time to get motivated! People who are highly self-motivated never sit back and let luck take over the driving seat of their lives. They make plans - not just for big projects but for everyday tasks as well. They plan what they are going to buy before they go shopping and they plan what they are going to say should someone call.

Good plans keep us motivated because they stop us feeling overwhelmed, and, at the same time, they make us undoubtedly much more efficient at almost everything we do. Planning ahead is always to our advantage.

Of course, even the most carefully constructed plan must sometimes be put aside, especially if an unexpected stroke of bad luck or good fortune happens to come our way. The secret is to be adaptable!

Planning

Follow the five-point plan to help you write asummary.

1. Decide which parts of the text are important.

2. Use adjectives, adverbs, link words, and adverb clauses to shorten or combine information.

3. Rephrase the text using your own words where possible.

4. Do not add your own personal views and opinions.

5. Decide what logical order to put your information in.

Writing

Read each sentence as you write to make sure that your summary:

· reads smoothly.

· makes sense without reading the original as well.

· includes all the main information.

Checking

As you write check that you have:

· made your summary approximately one third of the original article.

· not repeated information unnecessarily.

· used language economically where possible.

Appendix 5.

Presentation Signpost Expressions

Starting

Good morning/afternoon/evening (everyone, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues)

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak here today.

I am honored to have the opportunity to share our research with you here today.

I am happy to have this chance to speak to you (all) today about...

Introducing the topic

Today I’m going to talk about...

As you can see, I’m here today to talk to you about...

Explaining the structure

(Especially important if the structure of your talk is a little different from normal, or you have a very long presentation with many parts).

I’ve divided my presentation into two/three/four/several parts.

First, I’ll explain XXX and then I’ll move onto talk about...

Showing respect for listener’s knowledge

As you may know,

As you can see,

As you may be aware,

I know many of you are familiar with...

Many of you may have performed...

I am sure, you are all familiar with X’s work on

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 818