Concept: Para Summary

Every year 2 to 3 para summary questions are asked in CAT. In such questions you are given a paragraph/passage of approximately 100 words. 4 - 5 options would be given, which summarize the given paragraph. Based on this given paragraph, you have to choose the option which best summarizes the paragraph.

• Do not skim:
It is important that you understand the given paragraph properly. Skimming or fast reading would not help in this question type.
• Identify the key points:
The given passage would have some key ideas and addtional information to support those key ideas. It is very important to be able to figure out the key points from the passage.
• Mapping / Summarize yourself first:
Before you look at options, you should try to summarize the paragraph yourself. For this you need to understand the paragraph properly. You would have to map the paragraph (understand the flow of idea) and summarize accordingly. All key words mentioned in the paragraph should be there in the summary.
• Do not include irrelevant information:
While summarising brevity is appreciated. Summary should not be just reproducing the paragraph in different words. It should include only the key points and any unnecessary information (which is given just to support the main idea) can be excluded from the summary.
• Eliminate:
As much as you have to select the correct option, you also have to be sure why other options are not correct. Each of the incorrect options would have a short coming and hence can be eliminated. Let's see how can you eliminate the incorrect options.
• Out of Scope: If an option has some addtional information given which is not there in the paragraph, it can be eliminated.
• Extreme options: The author might have given some opinioin about an idea in the passage but the option may mention an extreme version of that and hence can be eliminated.
• Incomplete: Although the option may be correct based on the paragraph but it may not contain all key ideas. There would be a better option that this one.
• Para-Completion: The option may have a very valid conclusion to the given paragraph, but that is not the goal. The goal is to summarize and not conclude.
• Twisted representation: Although an idea from the passage may be mentioned in the option but it would be some twisted or modified form of the original idea.