WHAT IS RENDERING?

Imagine you work in an office. Imagine one morning your boss comes up to your desk with a file of papers and says, «I want you to read this up, represent it in a smaller volume, suppressing all insignificant information, and give your own conclusion». He/she will not be saying like that, actually. He/she will say, «Render this, please».

Rendering is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as «art of making presentations». Art indeed, as it requires a lot of your skills and knowledge of reconstructing and rearranging a written passage without any considerable damage to its context and idea(s).

You may have to prepare rendering for two main purposes:

· one can read your rendering and won’t have to take up the original passage.

· one can read your rendering and decide for themselves if they need to take up the original passage or not.

Rendering cannot be produced without thorough comprehension of the passage. Dividing the text into logical parts and singling out the main idea of each of them can be an essential help in understanding the passage. You will have to read the original more than once.

All methods of rendering are based on the notional compression of the text, which presupposes the elimination of all types of redundancy, i. e. elements that repeat each other.

A rendering is a text based on the notional compression of the original with the aim of rendering its general matter. The material in a rendering is presented from the point of view of the author of the original and does not include any elements of interpretation or evaluation. Rendering can be performed with two aims: informative and educational. Since the objective of this textbook is to provide you with tools for oral rendering in the framework of Conversation Practice lessons, you will still be asked to give your opinion of the original text at the end of your rendering.

A rendering is usually kept to the following structure:

· introduction, where you provide all necessary background information such as the title and source of the passage and state the main idea

· the body, where the main idea is revealed

· the conclusion on the passage

· your opinion of the problem (position) introduced in the passage

There are several basic principles you are to follow in order to make a successful rendering:

· You have to develop your power of judgment, so that you may be able to decide rightly what must be expressed and what must be suppressed.

· In rendering, facts should be expressed as plain statements, with constant reference to the author of the passage. Try to avoid evaluative words and phrases in the body of the rendering, keep them for expressing your own opinion.

· Figurative language is in most cases unsuitable

To master rendering you will need certain skills that are discussed further.

Note: Rendering is, so to say, a working name for a type of educational activity/exercise commonly used in Russian Universities. In British and American Universities, a term «abstracting» or «summarizing» is used to mean an independent work (not a step in the process of rendering as we view it here) and is translated into Russian as «реферирование». An abstract is usually done in written form and presupposes no personal opinion or interpretation.

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