Everything you’ve always wanted to know about the summary-reporting

competition

Instructions for competitors and correctors

It is a practically oriented competition, connected with the daily work of secretaries and management assistants.

Its full name is:

correspondence and summary-reporting

competition.

Participation in this competition is open to competitors using graphic shorthand, machine shorthand (stenotype or regular keyboard) or voice writing with speech recognition.

To participate, you should have a writing speed of at least 150 syllables a minute.

Part I, the verbatim transcription of a three-minute dictation of a letter introducing the theme of the second part.

Part II, producing a summary report in complete sentences from a text which will be dictated for seven minutes.

The dictation is delivered at an increasing rate of speed.

The work must be completed within 120 minutes.

The competition consists of two parts:

Example of the letter that is dictated

Dear Madam,

I am presently going through a period of financial difficulties and fear that

I will not be able to meet my monthly payments to your bank. The reason is that I

was seriously injured in a car accident which has put me out of work for some

time now.

However, the prospects of my recovery are good and I expect that within six

months I shall be able to start making on-time payments again... In view of these

circumstances, would you kindly agree to a suspension of payments for a period

of six months? If interest or other charges are to be added to my overall debt, I

would be grateful if you could freeze these charges...

Thanking you in advance for your cooperation and looking forward to hearing

from you as soon as possible,

Yours faithfully,

Then comes part II:

producing a summary report in complete

sentences from a text which will be dictated

for seven minutes.

The text of this latter dictation contains a title and several numbered paragraph titles which indicate the theme and subthemes of the text to be summarized. These titles have to be transcribed verbatim.

The number of words in your summary should not be more than half the number of the dictated words.

Example of the text to be summarized

Be aware of the role money plays in your life and try to make the

right financial decisions

1. Something about personal finance

When we use the expression “personal finance”, we are talking about the financial

situation of a single individual or a single family, and we are referring to income,

expenses, savings and debts. People who are experts in this field are called

"personal-finance professionals". It is their job to look at how individuals or

families earn their money...

2. How to stay in control of your expenses

To stay in control of expenses you have to stick to a so-called personal budget. In

a personal budget your expenditures are brought in line with your income, so that

expenditures do not exceed your income. The meaning of the word "expenditures"

is very broad. Not only do we include the expenses of daily living...

Two skills are needed...

Not only does the competition consist of two parts, a

competitor must also have two skills at his disposal:

a) the ability to record and transcribe verbatim;

b) the ability to summarize: to select and transcribe the main points from a dictated text.

How to summarize?

Summarizing starts with understanding what a speech or article is all about and then saying this in the shortest way possible.

“The shortest way possible” means that other people must be able to understand your summary!

Example of a summary

Dictation:

When we use the expression “personal finance”, we are talking about the financial situation of a single individual or a single family, and we are referring to income, expenses, savings and debts. People who are experts in this field are called "personal-finance professionals". It is their job to look at how individuals or families earn their money and make everyday and long-term decisions about spending it. In addition these professionals advise on the way in which individuals or families can keep their expenditures in line with their income, so as to prevent them from acquiring too high a burden of all kinds of debts.

Summary:

1. Personal finance has to do with the financial situation of a single individual or family. 2. Personal-finance professionals look at how people earn and spend their money. 3. They advise on how to keep one's expenditures in line with one's income, 4. so as to avoid high debts.

How is your work evaluated?

Your work consists of a verbatim transcription and a summary. The evaluation deals with both these elements:

1) The verbatim part (the letter and the titles of the text to be

summarized) is corrected and evaluated in the same way as

other shorthand transcriptions.

2) A model summary is used for the evaluation of your summary.

We look to what extent the sentences of this model are

represented in your summary. For every match, credit points

are allotted (at most 100 points in all).

Paragraph

Key

phra

ses

Max. number of

credit points*

Earned

Credit

points

Nr. of

words

used**

Allowed nr.

of words

Nr. of

superfl.

words

<

20%

20-

80% > 80%

1st paragr. 1 0 2,5 5 .... .... 65 ....

with a 2 0 2 4 ....

max. of 3 0 2 4 ....

17 points 4 0 2 4 .... +

Sum of the 1st paragraph ....

AUXILIARY FORM for the correspondence and summary-reporting competition

Intrinsic evaluation of the summary

*) The maximum number of credit points that goes with each paragraph of the model summary

is spread over its key phrases. Each time the summary of a competitor matches (80% -

100%) the meaning of a key phrase, all the points of this key phrase are allotted. A

defective match (20% - 80%) gives you half the points.

**)The number of words used by the competitor for his/her summary of each paragraph

without its heading. If this number is higher than the allowed number of words, then the

exceeding number of words is considered as superfluous (resulting in penalty points).

The evaluation of the summaries should be done by a group of correctors.

When it is not clear to what extent a sentence from the model summary is represented in a competitor’s summary, the whole group can discuss it.

In this way subjective, personal judgments of correctors can be avoided.

When am I a successful competitor?

When your name is on the results list!

To qualify for a place on the results list your work has to meet minimum standards:

not more than 30 penalty points for the letter

at least 50 credit points for your summary

Dear competitors,

Your participation in the correspondence and summary-reporting competition is not a waste of time.

Succeeding in obtaining a place on the results list means that you are able not only to record and transcribe a dictation verbatim but also to summarize it. This in turn means that you can quickly understand the essence of the spoken word. These are all valuable assets when entering the job market.

We wish our competitors good luck!

With kind regards,Jan den Holder (competition coordinator)