Summary Skills

 In Tuesday's class, we watched a short talk by Hans Rosling. Below you'll find an example summary of the main points from the talk:

In this short talk Hans Rosling, a statistician, describes how the gap between Western and Asian countries, in terms of income per capita and life expectancy, has been getting smaller in the recent past. He outlines the changes in these two indicators since the mid-19^th century, describing the positive and negative impacts of factors such as war, technological advances, independence, and political issues at specific times, showing that it was only after the second World War that the Asian giants, China and India, began to catch up with the West.

He argues that from the middle of the 20^th century, all the world’s economies began to converge, although some regions were developing faster than others and there were also wide variations within countries. The biggest obstacle to the development of health and wealth in these emerging economies is inequality. Rosling predicts that China and India will overtake the US and UK in their development in 2048.

You can find more exercises on summarising and paraphrasing on the excellent UEFAP site