The summary is worth 8 content marks plus language marks, and most students lose half of it for one reason: too few points. Full marks need ten or more distinct ideas, paraphrased, inside 120 words. This is the method that gets you there.
The summary asks you to take everything in Passage 2 that answers the topic clause, scattered across the whole passage, and compress it into your own words within a strict word limit. It is marked on a point count. The single biggest cause of a capped summary is not bad writing; it is too few points. Most candidates undershoot.
The grid is steep. Full marks need roughly ten or more distinct paraphrased points. Five points scores about three out of eight. So a fluent, elegant summary of six ideas is a five-mark answer wearing the clothes of an eight-mark one. The fix is not better prose; it is more points.
Do not write a single sentence of your summary until you have listed the points. Go through Passage 2 paragraph by paragraph and write down every distinct, relevant idea, one per line, with its paragraph number. Then count. If you have fewer than ten, go back to the paragraphs you read quickly, because the missing points are usually buried in the middle, not the prominent opening and closing.
This inventory step feels slow, and it is the opposite. Students who write straight from a single read cover the obvious ideas, miss the supporting ones, and produce a good-looking summary that scores five. Spending five minutes building the list first is what turns a five into an eight.
The points that get dropped are rarely the headline ideas. They are the qualifications, the second reasons, the consequences tucked into the back half of a paragraph. Imagine a passage paragraph that argues a four-day week boosts productivity. A quick reader marks one point. A careful reader sees three: rested workers concentrate better, fewer hours force sharper prioritising, and lower burnout means fewer sick days.
Train yourself to ask, after each paragraph, is there a second point here that I have walked past? One idea can hide three. The candidates who reach ten points do it by mining the paragraphs they would otherwise skim, not by finding extra paragraphs.
Every point must be in your own words. Lifted phrases score nothing on content and damage your language marks, which are attached to this answer. Recast each idea: change the words and the shape of the sentence, not just one or two words. Distinctive passage wording must be rebuilt, not lightly disguised.
Because language marks ride on the summary, the prose has to be clean as well as dense. That means varied sentence structure and no padding. A summary that earns full content marks but reads as a clumsy list of synonyms still loses language marks, so write it as connected, controlled English, not a string of disguised lifts.
Sometimes the topic clause asks for two directions at once, for example the benefits and the drawbacks, or the gains and the risks. When the word and joins two directions, both must be present and the marker must be able to see that you covered each half. A summary that buries both halves together, however many points it has, is treated as not fully answering the question.
The fix costs almost nothing: a pivot sentence. Cover one direction, then signal the turn clearly, for example with however, the drawbacks are considerable, then cover the other. That single signpost is what lets the marker confirm both halves are there. Without it, a dense answer that conflates the two parts is marked down even when all the points are present.
The limit is 120 words, and anything past word 120 is simply not read. That makes every word a trade: a word spent padding one point is a word stolen from another point you could have included. Cut filler connectives, cut repetition, and aim for roughly one clause per point so that ten or more points fit.
Count your words at the end and trim from the loosest sentences, not by deleting whole points. The discipline is to fit the most ideas into the fewest words, which is exactly the skill the question is built to test. A tight 118-word summary carrying ten points beats a sprawling one that runs over the limit and loses its last two ideas to the marker's pen.
Book a free trial lesson and see how we teach GP from the exam backwards, with marked practice against the band descriptors.