In the UK, apart from Scotland, summary of an aural and a written text is part of the advanced level exam (GCSE A-level) taken by A-Level languages students. It is arguably one of the more challenging tasks to be done in exam conditions and requires a good deal of practice during the course. the task requires students to get across key comprehension points, whie manipulating and altering the language of the source text. This is particularly hard with the audio text. In general, it's a skill which can be gradually built over the course, just like the film and literature essays, through 'micro-skill' exercises which contribute to the final 'macro-skill'. Much better to do this, of course, than to throw students into the deep end by just giving them a summary to do with no preparation. For example, students can do exercises such as: Paraphrasing single sentences. Doing morphology exercises (relating nouns to verbs, verbs to nouns, adjectives to adverbs, etc). Asking
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