Sample reading summary

Here is a text from The Economist, which you can read and write a summary report on. 

Cross-border co-operation or redrawing borders

A summary of Charlemagne’s article

In 1968 a language war took place at the University of Leuven splitting it into two parts. This was followed by a series of divisions within the Belgian Catholic church and major national political parties. The championing of the linguistic agenda eventually turned Belgium into a near-ungovernable state.

The last election in June 2010 left the Kingdom with a caretaker government for 230 days, thereby breaking a new European record. Nonetheless, due to its many-layered decentralised administration, daily life went on in Belgium. The country even chaired the rotating European Presidency without any problems during the second half of 2010. "Eurocrats", along with financial markets, seemed not to be worried about living in a paralysed country with a giant public debt close to 100% of its GDP.

Over the years up to the time this article came out, the break-up of Belgium had looked less and less unthinkable. Nevertheless, any hint of partition would trigger a dumping of Belgian bonds because of the uncertainty over who would pay back the federal debt.

Yet, some Flemish separatists, who are comforted by a strong euro and an ever-deeper integration of the EU, hope that Europe would be the acid that dissolves Belgium. As such, even though Europe overcame a lot of historic enmities within its borders as national sovereignties eroded through the EU integration, which is an antidote for violent nationalism, this integration process also enables non-violent groups, such as the Flemish separatists, to act up and receive broad support from voters. This means that a precedent of a rich region pulling away from a poorer one would concern many other EU Member States, such as Spain or Italy.

Luckily, conundrums created by overlapping communities are better solved with democratic tools, such as minority rights, autonomy or tolerance, rather than by redrawing borders.

Sample synthesis summary

Here you can find the main article which is to be synthesized with a second article in a summary report.

The U-bend of life
Why, beyond middle age, people get happier as they get older

According to many recent social, medical and economic studies, people should not dread ageing, as life is not a long slow decline but rather a U-bend.

After a cheerful adulthood and a depressing mid-life crisis, luckily things do not go downhill further. Although old age means losing treasures such as vitality, mental sharpness and looks, what is surprising is that the elderly finally find what they spend their lives pursuing, namely happiness.

Unconvinced by the conventional direct relationship between money and well-being, some economists have established a new branch of economics based on the new concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which policy makers have been increasingly taking into account.

Statisticians have been trying to find the answer to the perennial question of what makes people happy. Surveys have been conducted to measure two sides of this issue, i.e., global well-being and hedonic or emotional well-being. Moreover, the following four main factors have emerged from the collected data: gender, personality, external circumstances and age.

The U-bend was noticed in the early 1990s, and if turned upside down, it becomes an arc, peaking at the age of 46, when people are the most depressed.

Researchers believe that the U-bend must be the result of internal changes, not external circumstances. Older people have fewer rows and come up with better solutions to conflicts; they are better at controlling their emotions and at accepting misfortunes; they are also less prone to anger, and come to accept their strengths and weaknesses.

The U-bend also shows us that old people are healthier, as happier people are less likely to catch viruses and recover from illnesses more quickly. Thus, the cheerfulness of the old helps counteract their crumbliness and loss of productivity due to declining cognitive skills—a point worth remembering as the world is trying to work out how to deal with an ageing workforce.

Money really can buy you happiness with some qualifications
 
It is widely believed that money cannot buy happiness, and that growth-oriented free-market economies have got it wrong. Many recent studies have shown only a loose correlation between money and happiness when measured over time or across countries. The “Easterlin paradox” suggests that well-being depends not on absolute, but on relative income. For, people feel miserable not because they are poor, but because they are at the bottom of the particular pile in which they find themselves.

As data on the effect of income on well-being is now available almost everywhere in the world, the huge variation in life satisfaction across countries is becoming increasingly evident. Although developed countries score up to eight and developing countries as low as three out of ten, cultural factors are also at work, such as the ones prevailing over the surprisingly gloomy Portuguese in the Western World. Another example is the case of Hong Kong and Denmark, which have similar incomes per person, but respectively score 5.5 and eight on the ten-point scale. Along the same lines, the saddest place in the world relative to its income per person is Bulgaria.

Greetings and closers

Here is a list of greetings you can use in your formal emails depending on the recipient:

• Anonymous singular:

1. Dear Sir/Madam
2. Dear Madam/Sir
3. Dear Sir or Madam
4. Dear Madam or Sir

• Anonymous plural:

1. Dear Sirs/Ladies
2. Dear Ladies/Sirs
3. Dear Sirs and/or Ladies
4. Dear Ladies and/or Sirs

• With a given male name: Dear Mr Smith

• With a given female name:

1.  Dear Ms Smith (civil status irrelevant or unknown)
2.  Dear Mrs Smith (married)
3.  Dear Miss Smith (single and younger than fifty)

• With given names to a group of less than three people (male):  Dear Messrs Smith and Jones

• With given names to a group of less than three people (female):

1. Dear Mses Smith and Jones (civil statuses unknown, irrelevant or different)
2. Dear Mesdames Smith and Jones (both of them married)
3. Dear Misses Smith and Jones (both of them single and younger than fifty)

• With given names to a group of less than three people (mixed gender and not related to each other by marriage or blood): 

1. Dear Messrs Smith and Jones, and Ms Presley 
2. Dear Ms Presley, and Messrs Smith and Jones

• With a given name to a couple who use the same last name:

1. Dear Mr and Mrs Smith 
2. Dear Mrs and Mr Smith 

• With given names to a group of more than three people (mixed gender):

1. Dear Sirs/Ladies
2. Dear Ladies/Sirs
3. Dear Sirs and Ladies
4. Dear Ladies and Sirs

• With given names to a group of more than three people (all male): Dear Sirs

• With given names to a group of more than three people (all female): Dear Ladies 

• With a given first and last name and the gender is not clear:  Dear Alex Smith

Here is a list of closers which apply to all formal emails regardless of their content:

• With kind regards
• Kind regards
• Regards

You can hereby find a document on how to address various VIPs in different contexts.

Memo

Here you can find an example for a memo.  Source: Market Leader Upper Intermediate Business English Course Book by David Cotton, et al.

Minutes

Here is a document on writing minutes. 

 

Here you can find an example for minutes.  Source: Market Leader Upper Intermediate Business English Course Book by David Cotton, et al.

Notes and reports

I am hereby making a document available with tips on taking notes with the intention of writing reports.  There is also some information on how to write reports by expanding from given information, e.g., in an advertisement, which may not consist of full sentences, .

Here is a text from The Economist, which you can read and write a summary report on.  Those of you who could not join us on 14th of April, this article is to be read with the intention of writing a summary of not longer than one 1.5-spaced page.  If you can send me the summary before our next session on 28th of April, we can talk about it during our workshop.

Here is a speech text, which can be used as an exercise for taking notes and writing a summary.

Here is a stream of a BBC news piece, which you can watch once as you take notes.  You can then bring the notes to a summary report.

Here you can find four advertisements, each one of which can be expanded into a report.