Writing › Summarize Written Text

Exercise 7

← Back to Summarize Written Text

Task reminder: Read the passage carefully, then write a one-sentence summary of 5–75 words. You have 10 minutes. Aim for 55–65 words using your own words.

1. The Economics of Happiness

For much of economic history, it was assumed that rising incomes would naturally produce rising happiness. Research in the field of happiness economics has complicated this picture. The Easterlin Paradox, identified by economist Richard Easterlin in 1974, notes that while wealthier countries report higher average wellbeing than poorer ones, rising GDP within a country does not consistently increase average happiness over time. Beyond a threshold of material sufficiency, other factors — the quality of relationships, a sense of purpose, physical health, trust in institutions, and freedom from anxiety — appear to matter more than additional income. This has prompted some governments to supplement GDP with broader measures of national wellbeing.


Model Summary

Research in happiness economics has shown that while wealth correlates with wellbeing across countries, rising national income does not consistently increase happiness within them, as factors such as relationships, purpose, health, and institutional trust become more important beyond a basic threshold of material sufficiency.

2. Coral Triangle Conservation

The Coral Triangle — a six-million-square-kilometre maritime region spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste — contains the highest marine biodiversity on Earth, including over six hundred coral species and seventy-six percent of all known coral species globally. This extraordinary richness supports the food security and livelihoods of approximately 120 million people. However, the Coral Triangle faces acute threats from destructive fishing practices, coastal development, pollution, and the bleaching events driven by climate change. International conservation efforts have established marine protected areas and promoted sustainable fishing practices, but scientists warn that the pace of degradation continues to outstrip the pace of protection.


Model Summary

The Coral Triangle, a maritime region encompassing six nations, contains the world’s richest marine biodiversity and sustains 120 million people, but faces severe and escalating threats from destructive fishing, coastal development, pollution, and climate-driven bleaching that conservation efforts have so far been unable to fully counteract.

3. The Philosophy of Free Will

The question of whether human beings possess genuine free will — the capacity to choose differently from how they actually choose — has occupied philosophers for millennia and has taken on new dimensions with advances in neuroscience. Determinists argue that all human decisions are the inevitable products of prior causes — brain states, genetics, upbringing, and circumstance — leaving no room for genuine freedom. Compatibilists counter that free will, properly understood, does not require freedom from causation but simply the absence of external coercion: a person acts freely when their actions flow from their own desires and deliberations. Neuroscientific experiments suggesting that unconscious brain activity precedes conscious decisions have intensified the debate without, most philosophers argue, resolving it.


Model Summary

The philosophical debate over free will — whether determinism eliminates genuine choice or whether freedom is compatible with causal explanation — has been intensified but not resolved by neuroscientific evidence that unconscious brain activity appears to precede conscious decision-making.