Description
Description is the name we use for one of the most common kinds of writing. It is the naming of qualities of things.
When you write a passage of description, you want to make vivid a place, an object, an animal, a character, or a group. That is, instead of trying simply to convey facts about the thing described, you want to give your readers a direct impression of it, as if they were standing in its presence. A writer’s description of a character gives the reader a picture of the character.
Description is another way of analysing experience. To describe something you have to see it, and to see it, you have to consider it in its separate elements, much the way you look at one thing, then another, when you see a painting or a photograph.
In a description you arrange the elements so that you control the impression that they convey. Usually you arrange the elements in a descriptive paragraph according to the way you view a subject, moving from near to far, right to left, or top to bottom, for example.
Technical descriptions are characterised by the neutral style and vocabulary.
Suggestive descriptions convey the emotions and the impression evoked by the look of an object. They are characterised by the use of emotionally coloured words. Various grammatical structures are used to gain the effect.
Summary
A summary is a brief account giving the main points of a matter.
Summarising, or making a summary, is necessary in a variety of everyday situations (answering an examination question, making notes at a lecture, writing business letters etc.).
The ultimate aim of summarising is to express the essence of the text in a nutshell, to present ideas of a piece of writing in a logical and readable Form, clearly and precisely.
Summarising involves a close study of a piece of prose and setting it forth of everything of importance in it in a third of or a quarter of the existing length.
A summary requires the exclusion of minor points.
Another important thing is that you should use only the information taken from the passage. Do not include ideas of your own.
There is no room in a summary for repetition. Avoid unimportant details.
Avoid metaphors and other figures of speech.
Avoid wordily phrases containing colourless words and meaningless words.
Read the text twice to make sure that you comprehend the main idea and the plot.
Select the main points and link them in a logical order.
Check whether you covered all the essential points in your summary.
Write a rough and then a fair copy of your summary.
Reproduction
The reproduction task is a traditional type of tasks used in teaching foreign languages, particularly its written form. Learning a language depends largely upon our ability to imitate; it is through imitation, through repeated copying of ready-made patterns of grammatical and lexical usage that we achieve success in mastering a language.
Writing reproductions is a means of memory training.
The student is required to render the story in a version which remains on the whole faithful to the original. The student should do it using the wording of the original. The aim is to enlarge the student’s vocabulary and increase his skills in using grammatical patterns.
Students are allowed to listen to the text twice. The text may be read by the teacher or the announcer (if it is recorded). Before that the teacher explains new words, phrases and expressions used in the text.