Text 1: The Amazing Brains of Babies
Task type 3: Summary Completion
The focus while working on this task is to identify what information is missing.
Introduction
Definition :
The summary completion task tests the students' ability to locate ideas in a reading text and use them to complete a summary of that text. It is often used to test the students' understanding of a passage where different ideas about a subject are presented.
Fundamental :
The summary usually includes the main points of information from one section in the passage.
Advice :
Your job is to read both the passage and the summary and choose which words from a list complete the gaps in the summary.
The Basic Rules for the Summary Completion Task
The summary reports the main ideas from the relevant section of the passage, but the information may not be presented in the same order.
The missing words are listed, you choose one word to complete each gap in the summary.
The wording of the summary is not exactly the same as the passage, but it contains the same information and ideas.
When you read the passage, you sometimes see the words from the box, but sometimes the words are different becuase the summary is reporting the main ideas using different language.
Tips and Tactics for the Summary Completion Task

Before you look at the passage, read the summary and underline the main words and ideas.
Think about the type of information that is missing in each gap.
Go through the summary gap by gap and read the relevant sections of the passage.
A number of words will fit each gap logically and grammatically. You have to choose the one that reports the meaning exactly.
Remember that sometimes you may need to choose a word that has a different form to the way it is used in the passage to complete the summary.
Quiz
Practice
Pre-reading Text
Text surveying
Read the title of the text "The Amazing Brains of Babies" and see the structure of the text.
While-reading Text
Read the text entitled 'The Amazing Brains of Babies' and answer the questions:
Post-reading Text
Chain game
Working in groups, you are required to present a summary of the text in the form of a chain game .
Example :
Student 1 provides the first piece of information.
Student 2 repeats that information differently and adds another piece of information.
Student 3 repeats what was given by 1 and 2 differently and adds a third piece of information.
The process continues until the last student repeats all the pieces of information and adds another one.
Then, the process goes back (the last student recalls another piece of information and they do the same until student 1 who provided only one piece of information at the beginning retells all the pieces of information provided by his/ her classmates).
Self-evaluation
Which statement best describes how you feel about summary completion task ?
I feel confident about doing Yes/No/Not Given task
I did OK, but I still need to do more work on Yes/No/Not Given tasks
I need more practice with Yes/No/Not Given tasks. I need to focus on ...
