Summary completion

Reading Questions Type 8

Summary Completion
You have to complete a summary of the passage/text. The number of words you are allowed to use will be stated in the
instructions, so make sure you read them carefully. The words you need to use to complete an answer will USUALLY be
from consecutive words and not from words that are in different parts of text.

What you should do

• Apply reading strategy no. 3 (Look for
specific information/keyword)
• Do a grammar check as you read the
questions: does the gap require a singular or
plural noun, a verb, an adjective,etc?
• Skim the passage for synonyms and
paraphrases of the keyword. Find the place
where the information should be in the text
and read it carefully.
• Read the instruction carefully. This will help
you to determine how many words you
should type on the answer sheets.
• Numbers can be written as words or
numbers (e.g. ten or 10)
• Hyphenated words count as one word (so
well-being is one word).
• Make sure your sentences make sense
both logically and grammatically.
Summary Completion Strategy 
1. Read the question carefully. Note how many words you can
write (normally one, two or three) and if you should get the
words from the reading text or a list.

2. Skim the summary and try to understand the overall

meaning.

3. Try to predict the answers before you look at the reading

text. Also, think about the word type (noun, verb, adjective)
that should be included.
Summary Completion Strategy 
4. If you have a list of words, try to guess which 2 or 3 the
answer might be. Pay attention to words that collocate well with the
words in the sentence.

5. Identify which part of the reading text the summary relates to.

Scanning for synonyms from the summary will help you do this.

6. Look at that part of the section more carefully and choose the correct
answer. Remember to be careful with synonyms.

7. Check to see if your word makes the sentence grammatically

correct.
Summary Completion
There are two types of sentence completion questions in the reading exam.

Type 1. With a selection of possible answers. Type 2. Without a choice of possible answers.

IMPORTANT
Strategy for questions type 1
Since you have to choose the correct words from a preselected list, the words you select might be different from the words in the passage
but the meaning will be the same. Other words, often very similar in meaning, or grammatically incorrect, might be added to confuse you.
Summary Completion Type 1
8 minutes
 Summary Completion Type 2
Let's Go Bats 8 minutes

What else might the engineer think of? Well, blind humans
sometimes seem to have an uncanny sense of obstacles in their
path. It has been given the name 'facial vision’, because blind
people have reported that it feels a bit like the sense of touch, on the
face. One report tells of a totally blind boy who could ride his tricycle
at good speed round the block near his home, using facial vision.
Experiments showed that, in fact, facial vision is nothing to do with
touch or the front of the face, although the sensation may be
referred to the front of the face, like the referred pain in a phantom
limb.The sensation of facial vision, it turns out, really goes in through
the ears.

Blind people, without even being aware of the fact, are actually
using echoes of their own footsteps and of other sounds, to sense
the presence of obstacles. Before this was discovered, engineers
had already built instruments to exploit the principle, for example to
measure the depth of the sea under a ship. After this technique had
been invented, it was only a matter of time before weapons
designers adapted it for the detection of submarines. Both sides in
the Second World War relied heavily on these devices, under such
codenames as Asdic (British) and Sonar (American), as well as
Radar (American) or RDF (British), which uses radio echoes rather
than sound echoes.