A critical précis is a type of academic writing where you summarize another piece of text, its main ideas and arguments, in particular, to provide insight into its author’s thesis.
So, it happened again. Your teacher assigned yet another paper to you. It sounds something like “write a précis, in 800-1000 words (approximately four double-spaced pages), of the first two-thirds of ‘Reading: An Intertextual Activity,’ by Robert Scholes. Your precis should cover Scholes’s essay through the top of page 28.”
And we can almost hear you thinking:
What the heck is going on here, what is a precis?
Derived from French, the word “précis” means a summary. So, if your professors give you such writing assignments, they want you to summarize some text and convey the summary in minimum words.
- A critical précis is a clear, concise, and logical summary of a passage preserving its essential ideas only.
Before writing a précis, make sure you clearly understand its peculiarities and specification.
Continue reading →
