Summary & Attitudes

What Question 2 asks

Twenty marks split unevenly between two tasks that look related and are marked separately. Both work on Text B, a discursive piece arguing for slower, calmer streets.

The reading marks and the writing marks are different animals

The ten reading marks on 2(a) reward selection. Did you find the points the question asked for, and did you find enough of them? Nothing else. A summary that is graceless but comprehensive collects them all. The five writing marks reward something else entirely: organisation (W2), vocabulary and sentence structure (W3), and expression (W1). A summary can score 10 for reading and 1 for writing — and many do, because they are lists of retrieved facts joined by full stops.

Why the word limit is the question

A hundred and twenty words is roughly enough for six or seven compressed points. Text B contains considerably more than that. The limit is therefore not an obstacle to the task — it is the task. You are being tested on what you are prepared to leave out. Examiners stop reading at the limit. Anything after it is unread, unmarked, and — since you spent time writing it — actively expensive.

Harvesting points

Harvest before you write. The candidate who begins composing at the first relevant sentence has already lost control of the word count.

Worked example — harvesting Text B

According to Text B, summarise the reasons why slow-street schemes provoke opposition. [15]

Step 1. Fix the focus. The question asks about opposition — not about the benefits of slow streets, which Text B lists in detail. All of that is irrelevant. This is the trap.

Step 2. Sweep the text, marking only points that answer the focus: the change feels imposed rather than negotiated; councils arrive with a finished design; the moralising register is enraging; parking is genuinely lost; and the burden falls hardest on people whose work is measured in minutes.

Step 3. Strip the evidence. "Delivery drivers, carers, tradespeople" illustrates one point about working people — it is not three points, and naming all three costs words you do not have.

Step 4. Count. Six clean points is a strong harvest for 120 words. Trying for ten produces a list, and a list forfeits the writing marks.

The relevance test

Before any point survives into the summary, ask one question of it: does this answer the focus, or is it merely true? Text B is full of true things that answer no question that was asked — "slow streets reduce collisions, improve air quality and increase local retail revenue" is accurate and well expressed, and worth zero marks to a question about opposition.

The hundred and twenty words

Now write. One paragraph, no heading, no preamble, no examples — and every sentence carrying more than one idea.

Four rules of compression

01 No introduction, no conclusion. Both are pure cost. Start on your first point. 02 Subordinate, do not list. Two points joined by because or although occupy less space than two sentences and earn W2 at the same time. 03 Nominalise. "Councils do not consult residents" (5 words) beats "Councils have a habit of arriving without asking anyone first" (10). 04 Never quote. Quotation is the opposite of summary and forfeits the own-words requirement.

Worked example — the model summary

The six harvested points, compressed into continuous prose within the limit: "Opposition arises less from the inconvenience itself than from the manner of its imposition. Schemes are typically done to residents rather than developed with them, councils arriving with a completed design and presenting it as a moral improvement — a register that predictably enrages anyone who has just lost the parking outside her own door. There is also a genuine unfairness that supporters concede slowly: the heaviest cost falls on those whose working day is measured in minutes, such as carers and tradespeople, for whom advice to cycle is not an argument. Where schemes have survived, they began as reversible trials whose data was published honestly." — 108 words, six points, continuous prose, no quotation.

Notice what that paragraph does not contain: any figure, any place name, any statistic, any introduction, and any sentence carrying only one idea. Notice what it does contain: less from… than from, rather than, such as, for whom, where. Those connectives are the five writing marks, visible on the page.

The new 2(b) · attitudes

Five marks for reading a writer’s stance. New for 2027, and the question most candidates will meet cold.

Where attitude actually lives

Attitude is rarely stated. It leaks — through word choice, through concession, through what is treated as obvious. Text B never says I support slow streets but despair of their advocates. Yet that is the position, recoverable from three places: loaded vocabulary — the benefits are "wearily consistent", and wearily betrays impatience with those still arguing over settled evidence; concessions — "on that point, uncomfortably, the objectors are frequently correct"; and the turn — "none of this means the idea is wrong. It means the idea has been badly sold."

Worked example — 2(b), five marks

Explain the writer’s attitude towards the supporters of slow streets. Support your answer with details from the text. [5]

Step 1. Name the attitude precisely, and notice it is double: he agrees with the supporters and is exasperated by them. "He supports them" throws the question away.

Step 2. Anchor both halves. Agreement: the evidence is "wearily consistent". Exasperation: advocates "moralise" and are "slow to concede" the fairness problem.

Step 3. Evaluate — the R3 half. The criticism is sharper for coming from an ally: he is rescuing the idea, not attacking it.