PTE WRITING Summarize Written Text (SWT) exam questions

Tip: Summarize Written Text questions tend to have higher repeated rate than other question types in PTE Academic test. Make sure you understand the whole passage. Memorise words as much as you can. We selected some of PTE predicted Summarize Written Text (Writing) for January 2023. You can get full version of this material by accessing PTE Predicted Questions for January 2023.

1.Dandelion Seeds | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

The extraordinary flying ability of dandelion seeds is possible thanks to a form of flight that has not been seen before in nature, research has revealed. The discovery, which confirms the common plant among the natural world’s best fliers, shows that movement of air around and within its parachute-shaped bundle of bristles enables seeds to travel great distances — often a kilometer or more, kept afloat entirely by wind power. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh carried out experiments to better understand why dandelion seeds fly so well, despite their parachute structure being largely made up of empty space. Their study revealed that a ring-shaped air bubble forms as air moves through the bristles, enhancing the drag that slows each seed’s descent to the ground. This newly found form of air bubble — which the scientists have named the separated vortex ring — is physically detached from the bristles and is stabilized by air flowing through it. The amount of air flowing through, which is critical for keeping the bubble stable and directly above the seed in flight, is precisely controlled by the spacing of the bristles. This flight mechanism of the bristly parachute underpins the seeds’ steady flight. It is four times more efficient than what is possible with conventional parachute design, according to the research. Researchers suggest that the dandelion’s porous parachute might inspire the development of small-scale drones that require little or no power consumption. Such drones could be useful for remote sensing or air pollution monitoring.

Sample Answer:

While the extraordinary confirms the common plant among the natural world’s best fliers, a ring-shaped air bubble forms as air moves through the bristles and enhancing the drag that slows each seed’s descent to the ground, so critical for keeping the bubble stable and directly above the seed in flight, which inspire the development of small-scale drones that require little or no power consumption. (64 words)

2. Difference in Intelligence | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

People differ greatly in all aspects of what is casually known as intelligence. The differences are apparent not only in school, from kindergarten to college, but also in the most ordinary circumstances: in the words people use and comprehend, in their differing abilities to read a map or follow directions, or in their capacities for remembering telephone numbers or figuring change. The variations in these specific skills are so common that they are often taken for granted. Yet what makes people so different? It would be reasonable to think that the environment is the source of differences in cognitive skills — that we are what we learn. It is clear, for example, that human beings are not born with a full vocabulary; they have to learn words. Hence, learning must be the mechanism by which differences in vocabulary arise among individuals. And differences in experience — say, in the extent to which parents model and encourage vocabulary skills or in the quality of language training provided by schools — must be responsible for individual differences in learning. Earlier in this century, psychology was in fact dominated by environmental explanations for variance in cognitive abilities. More recently, however, most psychologists have begun to embrace a more balanced view: one in which nature and nurture interact in cognitive development. During the past few decades, studies in genetics have pointed to a substantial role for heredity in molding the components of intellect, and researchers have even begun to track down the genes involved in cognitive function. These findings do not refute the notion that environmental factors shape the learning process. Instead they suggest that differences in people’s genes affect how easily they learn.

Sample Answer:

People differ greatly in all aspects of what is casually known as intelligence, and that psychology was dominated by environmental explanations for variance in cognitive abilities, but recently researchers suggest that differences in people’s genes affect how easily they learn.(40 words)

3.Prior Knowledge | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

What is known (prior knowledge or pre-existing knowledge) is the knowledge, skill or ability that a learner brings to a new learning encounter. This includes all knowledge that is available before the learning event, and which has been gathered or developed by any means, and in any situation, including both formal and, quite often, informal learning situations. Learners need enough previous knowledge and understanding to enable them to learn new things; they also need help making links with new and previous knowledge explicit.

It is considered to be valuable to go through a process of what has been called ‘activating prior knowledge’. Teachers often go through this process at the beginning of a new topic. They also use introductory strategies at the beginning of lessons which are continuations from previous lessons. In terms of the practicalities of teaching, this is a process of making children think about the topic or remember what has been covered already. In terms of theory, it is to do with activating particular schemas.

Sample Answer:

Prior knowledge or pre-existing knowledge is the knowledge, skill or ability that a learner brings to a new learning encounter including both formal and informal learning situations, and that it is considered to be valuable as learners need enough previous knowledge and understanding to enable them to learn new things, so teachers often go through process of activating prior knowledge at the beginning of a new topic. (68 words)

4. Brain Wave | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

We can’t see it, but brains hum with electrical activity. Brain waves created by the coordinated firing of huge collections of nerve cells pinball around the brain. The waves can ricochet from the front of the brain to the back, or from deep structures all the way to the scalp and then back again. Called neuronal oscillations, these signals are known to accompany certain mental states. Quiet alpha waves ripple soothingly across the brains of meditating monks. Beta waves rise and fall during intense conversational turns. Fast gamma waves accompany sharp insights. Sluggish delta rhythms lull deep sleepers, while dreamers shift into slightly quicker theta rhythms. Researchers have long argued over whether these waves have purposes, and what those purposes might be. Some scientists see waves as inevitable but useless by-products of the signals that really matter — messages sent by individual nerve cells. Waves are simply a consequence of collective neural behavior, and nothing more, that view holds. But a growing body of evidence suggests just the opposite: instead of by-products of important signals, brain waves are key to how the brain operates, routing information among far-flung brain regions that need to work together. MIT’s Earl Miller is among the neuroscientists amassing evidence that waves are an essential part of how the brain operates. Brain oscillations deftly route information in a way that allows the brain to choose which signals in the world to pay attention to and which to ignore, his recent studies suggest. Other research supports this view, too. Studies on people with electrodes implanted in their brains suggest brain waves, and their interactions, help enable emotion, language, vision and more.

Sample Answer:

Brain waves created by the coordinated firing of huge collections of nerve cells pinball around the brain, and that beta waves rise and fall during intense conversational turns, so researchers have long argued over whether these waves have purposes, while evidence suggests brain waves are key to how the brain operates, routing information amoung far-flung brain regions that need to work together. (63 words)

5. Natural Language | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

When people start thinking about language, the first question which often occurs to them is this: is language natural to humans? – in the same way that grunting is natural to pigs, and barking comes naturally to dogs. Or is it just something we happen to have learned? – in the same way that dogs may learn to beg, or elephants may learn to waltz, or humans may learn to play the guitar. Clearly, in one sense, children ‘learn’ whatever language they are exposed to, be it Chinese, Nootka or English. So no one would deny that ‘learning’ is very important. But the crucial question is whether children are born with ‘blank sheets’ in their head as far as language is concerned – or whether humans are ‘programmed’ with an outline knowledge of the structure of languages in general. This question of whether language is partly due to nature or wholly due to learning or nurture is often referred to as the nature-nurture controversy, and has been discussed for centuries. For example, it was the topic of one of Plato’s dialogues, the Cratylus. Controversies which have been going on for literally ages tend to behave in a characteristic fashion. They lie dormant for a while, then break out fiercely. This particular issue resurfaced in linguistics in 1959 when the linguist Noam Chomsky wrote a devastating and witty review of Verbal Behavior, a book by the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner (Skinner 1957; Chomsky 1959). This book claimed to ‘explain’ language as a set of habits gradually built up over the years. According to Skinner, no complicated innate or mental mechanisms are needed. All that is necessary is the systematic observation of the events in the external world which prompt the speaker to utter sounds.

Sample Answer:

The question of whether language is partly due to nature or wholly due to learning or nurture is often referred to as the nature-nurture controversy, which have been going on for literally ages tend to behave in a characteristic fashion, while Skinner explained language as a set of habits gradually built up over the years and all that is necessary is the systematic observation of the events. (68 words)

6. The National Oceanography Center | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

The National Oceanography Center (NOC) is engaged in research into the potential risks and benefits of exploiting deep-sea mineral resources, some of which are essential for low-carbon technology, as well as using ocean robots to estimate the environmental impact of these potential deep-sea mining activities.

Late last year the NOC led an expedition on the RRS James Cook that found enough of the scarce element Tellurium present in the crust of a submerged volcano that, if it were all to be used in the production of solar PV panels, could provide 2/3rds of the UK’s annual electricity supply. Recently, the NOC also led an international study demonstrating deep-sea nodule mining will cause long-lasting damage to deep-sea life, lasting at least for decades.

These nodules are potato-sized rocks containing high levels of metals, including copper, manganese and nickel. They grow very slowly on the sea-bed, over millions of years. Although no commercial operations exist to extract these resources, many are planned.

Professor Edward Hill, Executive Director at the NOC commented, “By 2050 there will be nine billion people on earth and attention is increasingly turning to the ocean, particularly the deep ocean, for food, clean supplies of energy and strategic minerals. The NOC is undertaking research related to many aspects and perspectives involved in exploiting ocean resources. This research is aimed at informing with sound scientific evidence the decisions that will need to be taken in the future, as people increasingly turn to the oceans to address some of society’s greatest challenges.”

Sample Answer:

The National Oceanography Center is engaged in research into the potential risks and benefits of exploiting deep-sea mineral resources, and late last year the NOC led an expedition and found enough of the scarce element Tellurium which could provide UK’s annual electricity supply, and NOC also found out that deep-sea nodule mining will cause long-lasting damage to deep-sea life. (63 words)

7. Bank Overdraft | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

Banks provide short-term ﬁnance to companies in the form of an overdraft on a current account. The advantage of an overdraft is its flexibility. When the cash needs of the company increase with seasonal factors, the company can continue to write cheques and watch the overdraft increase. When the goods and services are sold and cash begins to ﬂow in, the company should be able to watch the overdraft decrease again. The most obvious example of a business which operates in this pattern is farming. The farmer uses the overdraft to ﬁnance the acquisition of seed for arable farming, or feed through the winter for stock farming and to cover the period when the crops or animals are growing and maturing. The overdraft is reduced when the crops or the animals are sold.

The main disadvantage of an overdraft is that it is repayable on demand. The farmer whose crop fails because of bad weather knows the problem of being unable to repay the overdraft. Having overdraft financing increases the worries of those who manage the company. The other disadvantage is that the interest payable on overdrafts is variable. When interest rates increase, the cost of the overdraft increases. Furthermore, for small companies there are often complaints that the rate of interest charged is high compared with that available to larger companies. The banks answer that the rates charged reﬂect relative risk and it is their experience that small companies are more risky.

Sample Answer:

Although the advantage that banks provide short-term ﬁnance to companies in the form of an overdraft on a current account is its flexibility, the main disadvantage of an overdraft is that it is repayable on demand as well as the interest payable on overdrafts is variable. (47 words)

8. Biology And Climatology | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

Ecology is the study of interactions of organisms among themselves and with their environment. It seeks to understand patterns in nature (e.g., the spatial and temporal distribution of organisms) and the processes governing those patterns. Climatology is the study of the physical state of the atmosphere – its instantaneous state or weather, its seasonal-to-interannual variability, its long-term average condition or climate, and how climate changes over time. These two fields of scientific study are distinctly different. Ecology is a discipline within the biological sciences and has as its core the principle of natural selection. Climatology is a discipline within the geophysical sciences based on applied physics and fluid dynamics. Both, however, share a common history.

The origin of these sciences is attributed to Aristotle and Theophrastus and their books Meteorological and Enquiry into Plants, respectively, but their modern beginnings trace back to natural history and plant geography. Seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century naturalists and geographers saw changes in vegetation as they explored new regions and laid the foundation for the development of ecology and climatology as they sought explanations for these geographic patterns. Alexander von Humboldt, in the early 1800s, observed that widely separated regions have structurally and functionally similar vegetation if their climates are similar. Alphonse de Candolle hypothesized that latitudinal zones of tropical, temperate, and arctic vegetation are caused by temperature and in 1874 proposed formal vegetation zones with associated temperature limits.

Sample Answer:

Ecology is the study of interactions of organisms among themselves and with their environment, while climatology is the study of the physical state of the atmosphere, and these two fields of scientific study are distinctly different, but they share a common history and previous naturalists and geographers see changes in vegetation as they explore new regions and lay the foundation for the development of ecology and climatology as they seek explanations for these geographic patterns. (75 words)

9. Two Ways of Learning Language | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

“Over the years, language teachers have alternated between favoring teaching approaches that focus primarily on language use and those that focus on language forms or analysis. The alternation has been due to a fundamental disagreement concerning whether one learns to communicate in a second language by communicating in that language (such as in an immersion experience) or whether one learns to communicate in a second language by learning the lexicogrammar – the words and grammatical structures – of the target language. In other words, the argument has been about two different means of achieving the same end.”

As with any enduring controversy, the matter is not easily resolved. For one thing, there is evidence to support both points of view. It is not uncommon to find learners who, for whatever reason, find themselves in a new country or a new region of their own country, who need to learn a new language, and who do so without the benefit of formal instruction. If they are postpubescent, they may well retain an accent of some kind, but they can pick up enough language to satisfy their communicative needs. In fact, some are natural acquirers who become highly proficient in this manner. In contrast, there are learners whose entire exposure to the new language comes in the form of classroom instruction in lexicogrammar. Yet they too achieve a measure of communicative proficiency, and certain of these learners become highly proficient as well. What we can infer from this is that humans are amazingly versatile learners and that some people have a natural aptitude for acquiring languages and will succeed no matter what the circumstances.

Sample Answer:

Language teachers alter between two teaching approaches: primarily focusing on language use or forms, which cannot be solved easily because both approaches can be supported by evidence, no matter people pick up languages for communicative needs or sit in a classroom setting, and in conclusion, humans are versatile learners and some people have a natural aptitude of acquiring languages and succeed under different circumstances.(64 words)

10. Skip Breakfast | Summarize Written Text (SWT)

Skipping breakfast seems a simple way of losing weight or saving time while getting the children ready for school or rushing off to work. But it can also be a sign of an unhealthy lifestyle with potentially dangerous consequences, including a higher risk of premature death. According to a study, adults and teenagers who miss the first meal of the day are less likely to look after their health. They tend to smoke more, drink more alcohol and take less exercise than those who do eat. Those who skip food in the morning are also more likely to be fatter and less well-educated, meaning they find it harder to get a job.

Researcher Dr. Anna Keski-Rahkonen said: Smoking, infrequent exercise, a low level of education, frequent alcohol use and a high body mass index were all associated with skipping breakfast in adults and adolescents. Our findings suggest this association exists throughout adulthood. Individuals who skip breakfast may care less about their health than those who eat breakfast.

Previously, experts assumed that missing breakfast often called the most important meal of the day was simply the marker of a hectic life or a way to try to lose weight. But Dr. Keski-Rahkonen, who led the study at Helsinki University, said the results revealed starting the day without food suggests an unhealthy lifestyle.

Sample Answer:

Although skipping breakfast seems a simple way of losing weight and was the marker of a hectic life, a study has revealed that more smoking and drinking, less exercise, being fatter and less educated as well as higher body mass index are all associated to the adults who miss ‘the most important meal of the day’, and this association exists during adulthood. (62 words)