PRECIS WRITING

A  precis pronounced / pray see/ is condensation, in your own words, of  a piece of writing- capturing the essence of its ideas. It is as much an exercise in comprehension as in writing, without understanding the original text thoroughly , you can not hope to distil its contents with any accuracy in a precis.A precis should be about one third the length of the original.What you need to concentrate on is the general drift or message of the text. Omit most of the embroidery- specific examples,details and digressions, and you may have to change the structure drastically, reordering and repacking the ideas .in to a new logical,flowing narrative.
So a precis differs from a summary, which simply abridges the original passage,often using the same wording; and it differs too from a paraphrase, which is simplified rewording of a difficult piece of writing[such as an old poem ] and does not need to be than the original.
The standard procedure for writing a precis should be as follows;

  Start by reading the original passage very carefully,two or three times if necessary,to grasp its message fully,use a dictionary to look up any word you have doubts about.

Note the main points rearranging their order if that serves the cause of a more logical development of ideas.

Write the first draft, use your own words; any direct speech, for instance, you have to redraft as indirect speech.

Revise or edit the text , concentrating on tightening the structure and reducing the number of words.Delete any needless elaborations such as an unhelpful examples or underemployed adjectives, reduce clauses to phrases where possible, and then reduce phrases to words, for example,the flabby sentence;

 When we eventually, reached the mountain,we enjoyed a well deserved lunch with the friends who had accompanied us
     could now read, far more economically,
At the summit,we had a good lunch with our companions.
Here is an example of a precis exercise from Samuel Butler's famous satire Erewhon-
This is what i gathered, that in the country Erewhon if a man falls in to ill health or catches any disorder, or fails bodily in any way before he is seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of his countrymen , and if convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced more or less severely as the case may be.There are subdivisions  of illness in to crimes and misdemeanours as with offences amongst ourselves- a man being punished very heavily for serious illness,while failure of eyes or hearing in one over sixty five,who has had good health hitherto, is dealt with fine only, or imprisonment in default of payment.But if a man forges a cheque or sets his house on fire, or robs with violence from the person or does any other such things as are criminal in our own country,he is either taken to the hospital and most carefully tended at the public expense,or if he is in good he is in good circumstances, he lets it be known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe fit of immorality, just as we do when we are ill, and they come and visit him with great solicitude, and inquire with interest how it all came about, what symptoms first showed themselves, and so forth-questions he will answer with perfect unreserve; for bad conduct,though considered no less deplorable than illness with ourselves and as unquestionably indicating something seriously wrong with the individual who misbehaves ,is nevertheless held to be the result either pre-natal or post - natal misfortune.
Here now is an attempt  as a precis of the passage;

If a person falls ill in Erewhon, or becomes bodily incapacitated before turning seventy,he has to undergo a trial by jury as a criminal offender.Serious illness is serious crime,and is punished severely,whereas loss of sight or hearing after sixty five is just a misdemeanour, and results only in a fine. By contrast,any act that we consider a serious crime-forgery,arson,robbery with violence and so on-though indicating something seriously wrong with the perpetrator is regarded  as arising from personal misfortune just before or after birth. Such as an attack of' 'immorality' results in free and devoted hospital care; or for the wealthy , bed -rest at home- the friends of the perpetrator come to visit and sympathise, and he tells them how it happened.
 

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Trees and forests

Man's dependence on plants is indispensable. It is this dependence for

food, shelter and clothing that has led him to explore all possible ways to

reserve plants from being lost to the ravages of natural or man-made

calamities. Accordingly, man has used different methods to overcome these

calamities. While doing so, scientists hit upon a technique whereby plants

only be restored from being lost but can also be developed into a

plant from a small plant part. This technique, called tissue culture

, subsequently proved to be a boon for mankind. Basically, tissue culture 

 is a technique by which small pieces of different parts of a plant body

called explants ) are grown on a nutritional media under completely sterile conditions. These explants divide and gradually develop either into

mass of cells called callus or after a few cell divisions differentiate

to form full-fledged plants

The concept of tissue culture dates back to 1878 when a German Botanist

ting said that from a small plant piece, a whole plant can be regeneration

ed. Later, other scientists like Haberlandt in 1902 postulated that cultivation

 of artificial embryos can be possible depending on the nutritional

A tree is a woody plant usually with a single stem. A large area well
covered with woody plants is a forest. The woody plants called shrubs
and bushes are smaller than trees and have usually more than one main
stem Trees are the largest living things on the Earth, and they live longer
than any animal. The tallest trees are mountain ashes which have grown
to well over 330 feet. The oldest trees are the Californian pines, some of
which are more than 4,500 years old. The age of a tree can be told by
counting the rings in the trunk. In most kinds of temperate trees (ie. grown
in neither very hot nor very cold climates ) , new wood is formed each year in a layer outside the wood of the previous year

The layers of wood, seen on the cut end of a felled tree, are circular and are called annual

rings. Each ring in the trunk of the wood represents one year of the tree's

life. In a year of good rainfall, the ring formed is wider than one formed

in the drier year. A record of rainfall can thus be read in tree rings.

Trees are important to our world for a number of reasons. Like all green

plants, they build up their food by the process known as photosynthesis

The by-product of this process is oxygen which is given off into the air

and replaces the oxygen which human beings and other animals take from

the atmosphere as they breathe. That is why the great forests have been

called the "lungs of the world". They make much of the oxygen we need

to live.

Did you know that around 270 eucalyptus trees or 460 bamboo plants per tonne of paper produced are saved by  the manufacture of hand made paper ?The hand made paper helps in preventing water ,land and air pollution because very small quantities of chemicals are used compared  to the large quantity of polluting chemicals used by paper mills.

Banyan is also considered unique in southern Asia because of its growth  and its shade which protects us from the burning sun.It has been a meeting point, a place of worship of man for ages.It is popular with the name of,'strangler fig' on account of its unusual growth. The birds,bats,and monkeys deposit the seeds of banyan in the rich soil, when it  grows, it sends aerial roots down the trunk of the supporting tree. So the roots that reach the ground choke the tree to prevent its trunk from being enlarged.

THE BRAIN DRAIN

''Give me your tired, your poor
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.''
These are the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York. But
ironically, those who go there are not the poor and the wretched but the
skilled and the highly qualified doctors, engineers, scientists, nurses and
 technicians, from other countries including India.
The urge to go to the west has become compelling in India in post-independence
 years. Both the world wars and political upheavals like civil
wars and revolutions spawned' large migrations during the first half of
this century. The migrations in the latter half stem from economic motivation.
 People in power like scientists and skilled persons have, from the
very beginning, played a key role in international migration. The conscious
 policy to encourage migration of high quality manpower from other
regions and countries is related to the positive contribution made by the
immigrants to their country of adoption, resulting in a net advantage to
 it. This phenomenon of gaining qualified and skilled personnel at the cost
of the donor country is generally termed brain drain.
Perhaps the most important reason for the brain drain phenomenon is an educational
  pattern which does not serve the needs of the country. The others are  unrecognised or unrewarded talents and lack of job opportuniitesfor trained professionals. For example, the emoluments drawn by a

research worker are far less than those of a factory hand. This is the start

of the brain drain of the young.

Lure of higher salaries in hard currency

good living and favourable conditions of settling down with the family

also prompt highly qualified Indians to look to the west for jobs. The migration

of Indian manpower to the US in the 1950's and the first half of

the was limited by the US Immigration Act of 1952 which set the

annual quota at 100 for Indian nationals. The total number of Indian engineers

, scientists and physicians admitted during 1964-65 numbered more

than 1,000. However, the scene changed drastically in 1965 when the US

 immigration laws eliminated preferential treatment accorded to West Europeans

 and gave priority to immigrants with skills in short supply. As a

result, between 1966-1970, thousands of Indian professionals made their

way to the US.

What is disconcerting is that after India has proved to be the fount? of

more than one fourth of the skilled immigrants to the US, the major part of this brain drain is being borne by the medical faculties. According to

the World Health Organisation, India

is the largest donor of power in the world. 

Our  country thereby  loses not only these professionals but also the re

 sources invested in their training. For instance, the government spends

Rs 2 lakh on every IIT graduate and it is seen that one out of every three

of these settles in the US after going there for higher studies.

The earnings and remittances from the Indians settled abroad or their

eventual return are poor compensation for the lasting and serious loss

45 inflicted by their outflow. The specific objectives of the anti-brain drain

policies, within the framework of independent development, are to bring

back to a limited extent, the lost talents and skills from abroad and reduce

the outflow in the short run and finally end it except that necessitated by

genuine, multi-lateral international dependence.