1.4 How to get proficiency in Precis Writing

“Practice makes a man perfect”, is a maxim, which is never so true when applied to any branch of art or literature, as it is when applied to précis writing. By acquiring the habit of making a précis, we can improve our mental powers, and can make a skillful précis when required to do so. Students should be taught how to make a précis at a very early stage and the start once given should be followed up in all the classes of a school or a college. The teacher of English n a high school or a college should always keep in mind the fourfold aim of teaching English to those students who study it as a foreign language, viz. (a) to speak English, (b) to understand spoken English, (c) to write English, and (d) to understand spoken English. He should often find out whether his students understand or not what they read. To ascertain this, he can employ various devices. While teaching a lesson to his students, he may ask them to close their books and reproduce what he has been teaching. In college-classes, the lecturer after having read a paragraph and having explained the difficulties and the references that it contains, can ask a student to give the substance of the paragraph in a sentence or two. If he has been delivering a lecture on a certain topic to an advanced class, and has been discussing many points in the lecture, he can ask his students to reproduce briefly what he said about a certain point. Such devices will not only make the students mentally alert, but will also teach them how to cultivate the habit of intelligent reading and making a précis. However, the best way of testing whether the students have understood a passage or not, is to ask them to summarize it. Students in high classes should be asked to write a précis once a week. The passage may be selected from their prescribed text-books and from dailies and weeklies, suited to their standard. Practice in making a précis is indispensable for the college students. For this purpose, the passages should invariably be selected from newspapers, weeklies and books of standard authors. The method of making a précis should be thoroughly discussed with them and also illustrated. The habit of making a précis will teach the students how to read correctly and how to understand exactly. They will learn to discriminate between the essential and the inessential parts of what they read. They will also know how to arrange matter in a logical order. They will acquire the ability to use the right word to convey a certain sense in a concise and striking manner. They will learn how to write a piece of continuous narrative. Précis writing, therefore, a great help to mental development and is, consequently, of much worth in educational training. It provides training in concentration, clear thinking, intelligent grasp and close insight. In short, it is a training in expressing much in a few words.