Summarize Written Text

Practise with these recently repeated passages. Read carefully, plan, then write one sentence (5–75 words).

1. 1
   PPTE Academic

   Item 1 of 4 · 00:09:58

   Read the passage below and summarize it using one sentence. Type your response in the box at the bottom of the screen. You have 10 minutes to finish this task. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.

   When the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, the carved characters that covered its surface were quickly copied. Printer's ink was applied to the Stone and white paper laid over it. When the paper was removed, it revealed an exact copy of the text—but in reverse. Since then, many copies or 'facsimiles' have been made using a variety of materials. Inevitably, the surface of the Stone accumulated many layers of material left over from these activities, despite attempts to remove any residue. Once on display, the grease from many thousands of human hands eager to touch the Stone added to the problem. An opportunity for investigation and cleaning the Rosetta Stone arose when this famous object was made the centerpiece of the Cracking Codes exhibition at The British Museum in 1999. When work commenced to remove all but the original, ancient material, the stone was black with white lettering. As treatment progressed, the different substances uncovered were analyzed. Grease from human handling, a coating of carnauba wax from the early 1800s and printer's ink from 1799 were cleaned away using cotton wool swabs and liniment of soap, white spirit, acetone and purified water. Finally, white paint in the text, applied in 1981, which had been left in place until now as a protective coating, was removed with cotton swabs and purified water. A small square at the bottom left corner of the face of the Stone was left untouched to show the darkened wax and the white infill.

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2. 2
   PPTE Academic

   Item 2 of 4 · 00:09:58

   Read the passage below and summarize it using one sentence. Type your response in the box at the bottom of the screen. You have 10 minutes to finish this task. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.

   If your recruiting efforts attract job applicants with too much experience—a near certainty in this weak labor market—you should consider a response that runs counter to most hiring managers' MO: Don't reject those applicants out of hand. Instead, take a closer look. New research shows that overqualified workers tend to perform better than other employees, and they don't quit any sooner. Furthermore, a simple managerial tactic—empowerment—can mitigate any dissatisfaction they may feel. The prejudice against too-good employees is pervasive. Companies tend to prefer an applicant who is a 'perfect fit' over someone who brings more intelligence, education, or experience than needed. On the surface, this bias makes sense: Studies have consistently shown that employees who consider themselves overqualified exhibit higher levels of discontent. For example, overqualification correlated well with job dissatisfaction in a 2008 study of 156 call-center reps by Israeli researchers Saul Fine and Baruch Nevo. And unlike discrimination based on age or gender, declining to hire overqualified workers is perfectly legal. But even before the economic downturn, a surplus of overqualified candidates was a global problem, particularly in developing economies, where rising education levels are giving workers more skills than are needed to supply the growing service sectors. If managers can get beyond the conventional wisdom, the growing pool of too-good applicants is a great opportunity. Berrin Erdogan and Talya N. Bauer of Portland State University in Oregon found that overqualified workers' feelings of dissatisfaction can be dissipated by giving them autonomy in decision making. At stores where employees didn't feel empowered, 'overeducated' workers expressed greater dissatisfaction than their colleagues did and were more likely to state an intention to quit. But that difference vanished where self-reported autonomy was high.

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3. 3
   PPTE Academic

   Item 3 of 4 · 00:09:58

   Read the passage below and summarize it using one sentence. Type your response in the box at the bottom of the screen. You have 10 minutes to finish this task. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.

   Mammals can be one of the hardest-hit groups by habitat loss, and a lot of research has been carried out to find the best ways to conserve mammal diversity. Much of this research has focused on very large-scale changes in land use and the impacts this will have on overall mammal diversity. However, many important decisions about land use are made at much more local scales, for example at the level of individual landowners. Now, in a detailed study led by Imperial College London that looked at mammal diversity across different small-scale landscapes in Borneo, researchers have identified previously logged forests as an overlooked source of refuge for mammals. These 'selectively logged' forests, where only certain tree species are removed, are often considered to be degraded and are frequently cleared to make way for plantations. The new results, published in the journal Ecological Applications, suggest they should be better protected. The team recorded mammals using trap-and-release techniques and motion-sensing cameras over three years, creating an unprecedented 20,000 records of species in three land-use types: old-growth forest, logged forest and oil palm plantation. This is one of the most intensive studies of rainforest mammal diversity ever undertaken. To their surprise, they found that mammal diversity for large mammals, like the clouded leopard and civets, was similar for both old-growth forests and logged forests. For small mammals, such as squirrels and rodents, the diversity was actually higher in logged forests.

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4. 4
   PPTE Academic

   Item 4 of 4 · 00:09:58

   Read the passage below and summarize it using one sentence. Type your response in the box at the bottom of the screen. You have 10 minutes to finish this task. Your response will be judged on the quality of your writing and on how well your response presents the key points in the passage.

   The world is shrinking rapidly with the advent of faster communication, transportation, and financial flows. Products developed in one country—Gucci purses, Sony electronics, McDonald's hamburgers, Japanese sushi, German BMWs—have found enthusiastic acceptance in other countries. International trade has boomed over the past three decades. Since 1990, the number of multinational corporations in the world has grown from 30,000 to more than 63,000. Some of these multinationals are true giants. In fact, of the largest 150 'economies' in the world, only 81 are countries. The remaining 69 are multinational corporations. Walmart, the world's largest company, has annual revenues greater than the GDP of all but the world's 21 largest countries. Between 2000 and 2008, total world trade grew more than 7 percent per year, easily outstripping GDP output, which was about 3 percent. Despite a dip in world trade caused by the recent worldwide recession, the world trade of products and services last year was valued at more than $12 trillion, about 17 percent of GDP worldwide. Many U.S. companies have long been successful at international marketing: McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, GE, IBM, Colgate, Caterpillar, Boeing, and dozens of other American firms have made the world their market. In the United States, names such as Sony, Toyota, Nestlé, IKEA, Canon, and Nokia have become household words.

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Adapted from The Official Guide to PTE Academic, 3rd edition · Pearson Education. Click each step to expand, answer, then reveal the model answer.