WEEK 8 – LESSON 8
SUMMARY WRITING
A summary is a shortened version of someone else’s writing or thoughts. The only purpose of a summary is to condense what another writer has written. This means reducing what the writer has said to its main points.
Summarising is a useful study skill especially in completing written reports. Summaries are used in academic writing for every field. When writing research report, you usually include information from various sources. In order to make the report richer and clearer, you need to summarise all the important information that you have gathered.
Summaries vary in length. The amount of details depends on the requirement of your assignment, the length of the original source (article, book, passage) and the purpose of the summary.
Good summaries should present a clear, concise idea of the main points of an article to someone who has not read it. In order to write an effective summary, you need to have a true understanding of the original article. This means taking the time to read the article carefully in order to determine the writer’s purpose, main idea, and supporting point.
In writing the summary, let your reader know the piece that you are summarizing. Identify the title, author and source of the piece. You may want to use this formula:
In ‘Title of the Piece’ (source and date of piece), author shows that: central idea of the piece. The author supports the main idea by using ______and showing that ______.
A good summary:
· is shorter than the original (approximately one third the length of the original source);
· includes the main ideas and major supporting points of what you have read in your own words;
· does not include your knowledge or any of your own personal ideas or opinion;
· does not include minor details or repeated details.
Strategies for Writing Summaries
1. Read the text carefully and try to understand what the writer is saying. Determine the thesis statement and find out what aspects of the text you are expected to summarize because you will not need to summarize the whole text.
2. Reread the text and this time look out for the major points relevant to your summary. As you read, you may want to underline key words and phrases.
3. Do not include examples, illustrations, specific details and unnecessary explanations given in the passage in your summary. However, definitions of key terms and concepts should be included.
4. After you have identified the key words, key phrases and main points, you can draw a map of the main idea and major details (supporting ideas) or write an outline before you organize the points.
5. Using your notes as a guide, write the first draft of your summary. Use your own words as far as possible. Paraphrase words and expressions the writer has used by finding words and expressions that have the same meaning as those of the writer’s. Do not include information which is not found in the passage or add your opinion or thoughts to the summary.
6. Try to be concise. If your summary is too long, do not omit any main points. Instead, leave out unnecessary words.
7. Your summary has to be clear, logical, and cohesive. Use appropriate transition words such as and, but, so, as a result, on the other hand, moreover etc.
8. When you have completed your draft, revise the draft of your summary and check to see that you have accurately summarised the writer’s main ideas. Make sure that all the ideas are linked correctly. Eliminate any of the writer’s minor points. In addition, be sure that you do not include any of your own thoughts or opinions about the topic.
9. Finally, edit your summary to make sure that the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are correct.
Summary Words
A summary word (phrase) names a general idea that has several examples or parts.
Example:
One morning, Ayako decided to make some egg salad. First, she boiled the water. Then she added a drop of vinegar and six eggs. She boiled them for ten minutes. After that, she placed the eggs in some cold water to cool them. Then she peeled the eggs and chopped them. Finally, she added some mayonnaise and chopped celery, and the salad was ready. The whole process had taken about an hour.
*** The phrase ‘whole process’ is a summary phrase that refers to all the steps in making egg salad.
Exercise 1
Write a summary word or phrase for each list.
Example:
Sports
- baseball
- basketball
- football
- swimming
- tennis
1. ______
- Mars
- Uranus
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- Mercury
2. ______
- clean the house
- buy some chips
- make some pizza
- bake a cake and decorate it
- wrap the presents
- set the table
- cool the drinks
3. ______
- verb
- noun
- adjective
- pronoun
- adverb
Summarising a Sentence
When summarising a sentence, you make it much shorter by using summary words and phrases to take place of groups of words about the same topic. Leave out descriptive words such as adjectives or adverbs, and keep only words that tell the main point of the sentences. Use as few words as possible but the summary should still be a complete sentence.
Example:
The tall cowboy put the saddle on his horse, untied him from the fence, waved good-bye, and rode off into the sunset.
Summary:
The cowboy left.
**** The word tall is left out because it is a descriptive word (adjective). All of the cowboy’s actions (put the saddle on his horse, untied him from the fence, waved good-bye, and rode off) are just extra details. They all can be summarised in one word which is left.