TECHNIQUE FOR WRITING A GOOD PRECIS

English precis and composition is a crucial paper in CSS. It can help you get high scores. Precis is the most important part of this paper. In the following lines, techniques of writing a good precis are given along with 3 sample passages and their precis.

Read the passage carefully and try to understand it. In practice session, you may consult a dictionary for the meanings of unfamiliar words and idioms, but in an examination you can only resort to deduction. A second reading is necessary, and a third is often advisable for a deeper understanding of the material.

Summarise the passage in the form of headings or points. This enables you to draw out the main ideas of the passage and omit the less important details and merely illustrative material.

Read the passage again, as some of the details may be required to enable you to form complete sentences.

Turn over or put aside the book or sheet which contains the passage. Then write the precis, basing it on the points you have already extracted. The precis must be in complete sentences which follow one another in logical sequence, and as far as possible in your own words. Do not look at the passage as you write your precis.

A precis is usually written in reported speech, and therefore in the third person. Unless required, do not use the first person pronouns ‘I and ‘we’.
When you have completed the precis, and not before, study the passage again for the purpose of correcting any factual errors you may have made, and for including any significant material you may have left out.

If necessary, make a fair copy of the precis.

The purpose behind not looking at the passage while writing the precis is to get you to use your own words as much as possible and to remove the temptation to include too much material. Using this device, your mind acts as a sieve to retain only the significant material and reject the unimportant. A very skilled writer may achieve this sifting without putting aside the passage.

Regarding the length of a precis, it is often recommended that you reduce the original to one-third its length (one-third the number of words), but this is only a rough-and-ready piece of advice. In an examination, it is inadvisable to exceed the number of words prescribed; neither should you use far fewer than the number stated, as you may omit some significant information.

Sample Passages

1.    ORIGINAL PASSAGE
For long after independence, the Civil Service attracted the country’s best brains, but bureaucracy became a dirty word ‘it was held responsible for all that went wrong in the areas where the Government’s role mattered. Was it the sinner or was it sinned against? Perhaps both. Bureaucrats did not function in a vacuum or in lofty isolation. They were part of the new milieu, where the state machinery was concerned not only with law and order and revenue collection, as was the case in the colonial days, but also with vastly expanded activity ranging from social welfare to economic development and from conducting external relations to deal with Centre’ State relations, apart from looking after the general administration. The democratic polity that we gave unto ourselves accorded a dominant position in the government to the large tribe of elected representatives. This was a new situation, challenging and exciting. It called for a readjustment of roles, and the establishment of new equations. With some shinning exceptions, the bureaucracy did not ‘or could not’ rise to the occasion. But let this generalisation not convey impression that the administrative services were totally devoid of uprightness.

Precis 

BUREAUCRACY
The Civil Service once attracted the most talented people. But, since independence, owing to the increase in its responsibilities, and need to work under the people’s representatives, the bureaucracy, as part of democratic governance, has not always been successful. Except in certain instances, when it showed efficiency and uprightness, the bureaucracy has not apparently delivered what is expected of it.

2.    ORIGINAL PASSAGE
It is strange how expressions of antagonism may stem from very small and, when one thinks seriously about it, insignificant differences between groups of people. Some of these differences of behaviour lead to nicknames which people use to call others not of their race or country. Thus Americans in the 19th century, largely British descent, took to calling the British ‘limeys’ because British sailors were given daily doses of lime juice to prevent scurvy. Because Americans did not indulge in the same healthy procedure, they considered the practice absurd, and this gave rise to a convenient word with which to label the British. Similarly, because the British did not care for pickled cabbage, while the Germans did, ‘kraut’ became an appellation for a German during the Second World War. Now that Americans, British and Germans are on friendly terms, they may laugh at the silly names they called each other in the past.

Precis 

HOW ANTAGONISM STEMS?
Minor differences between groups sometimes give rise to the nicknames by which one group calls another. For example, Americans in the last century called the British ‘limeys’ because of the lime juice British sailors, but not Americans, drank to prevent scurvy, and the British during the Second World War called the Germans ‘krauts’ after the pickled cabbage the latter, but not the former, ate. All groups now tend to laugh at these names.

3.    ORIGINAL PASSAGE
For all industrial development we need power and the ultimate restriction on power is the fuel from which it is extracted. Is there enough fuel from which it is extracted? Is there enough fuel to satisfy our ever-growing hunger for power? For conventional fuels such as wood, coal, oil, the answer is quite clearly No. The world’s known stock of oil is only sufficient to last sixty years at the present rate of consumption and the rate of consumption keeps going up and we are burning too much wood already, and the earth’s known fuel-wood forests would be consumed soon. Coal is still in fair supply, but in some areas ‘notably England’ it is becoming increasingly difficult to mine it, and therefore uneconomical.

Besides fuel as a source of power, there is the device for harnessing energy from rapidly flowing water. Few sources of waterpower remain untapped, and the power they yield meets only a fraction of our total need. Moreover, it is not very dependable, because water storing in reservoirs depends on rains, which are sometimes freakish.

Conventional fuels release energy by combustion; but fission makes use of another kind of fuel, remarkable for its concentration of power. All fissionable material is extracted or manufactured from two elements uranium and thorium, and the world has plentiful stock of them. But even so they will not last forever. There is probably enough to last for several centuries. Fission in the techniques known up till now converts only one-tenth of one per cent of its fuel into energy. Complete conversion of fissionable fuels into energy is known at present laboratory level only. If it can be harnessed into a practical power device, one pounds of coal. Now the scientists’ quest is to find out some more efficient process for using these fuels outside the laboratory on industrial scale. But after even fissionable material is gone, what then? There is no reason to despair. The sun is continually pouring solar energy on earth: we have only to gather and harness it. Those who think that man will one day be left without any source of power are not far-sighted enough.

Precis

ENERGY CRISIS
Power, which is extracted from fuel, is essential for all industrial development. The fear expressed is that conventional type of fuel is not going to last for a very long time. Fortunately we have enough stock of uranium and thorium and all fissionable material, which is a great source of energy, is extracted from these elements.

The scientists are busy in finding some efficient process for the use of fissionable material for industrial purposes. The Solar Energy that we receive from the sun can also be gathered, harnessed and used for our purposes. So the people, who imagine that in foreseeable future, man would be left without any source of power, only display short sightedness.