Read “Lesson 5” (Cohesion and Coherence) and “Lesson 6” (Emphasis ) and then draft an executive summary for each chapter.
The desired consequence of an executive summary is for an actual “executive” to use the summary information to decide:
what priority to assign the reading of the larger text,
what new and/or relevant information might be contained in the larger text,
whether (or not) to assign someone to prepare a more informative report on the larger text, and/or
how well the writer of the summary understands (or not) what the target audience (the “executive”) values with regard to information and discourse conventions.
As a rule of thumb, the word count of an executive summary is generally about ten percent of the word count of the larger text unless the larger text is very large.
An well-crafted executive summary affords a qualified reader information that can be:
used to make decisions about the text and/or the writer of the executive summary before/without reading the entire text.
Writers of executive summaries should 1.adhere to the conventions of style which the discourse community (of the target audience) values
For example, it is generally unconventional to include an abridged outline, a bulleted list, or a numbered list in an executive summary
2. refrain from introducing their personal opinions or comments into the summary,
3. refrain from using first-person pronouns in the summary,
4. keep the use of second-person pronouns to a minimum, and
provide a relatively-comprehensive synopsis, yet one tailored to the targeted audience.
