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What Is A Summary?: When Are Summaries Used?

The document discusses what a summary is and when they are used. A summary is a record in the reader's own words that gives the main points of a written or spoken piece, omitting details and not including interpretation. Summaries are used to improve reading comprehension, ensure understanding of important studies, and insert overviews of relevant sources in academic papers. To write a summary, underline important points, list the main ideas and supporting details, and express them in your own words without copying.

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Mikelyn Anderson
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134 views2 pages

What Is A Summary?: When Are Summaries Used?

The document discusses what a summary is and when they are used. A summary is a record in the reader's own words that gives the main points of a written or spoken piece, omitting details and not including interpretation. Summaries are used to improve reading comprehension, ensure understanding of important studies, and insert overviews of relevant sources in academic papers. To write a summary, underline important points, list the main ideas and supporting details, and express them in your own words without copying.

Uploaded by

Mikelyn Anderson
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Summary

What is a summary?

A summary is a record in a reader's own words that gives the main points of a
piece of writing such as a newspaper article, the chapter of a book, or even a
whole book. It is also possible to summarize something that you have heard, such
as a lecture, or something that you have seen and heard, such as a movie. A
summary omits details, and does not include the reader's interpretation of the
original.

When are summaries used?

1. In general terms, writing summaries is a good way of improving one's ability


to read because it forces the reader to focus on understanding the whole of
something rather than on just following each word or sentence.
2. In academic terms:
a) If you are reading something that is very important for your studies and/or
difficult to understand, writing a summary helps you to make sure that you
have understood it. You can also refer to it later to refresh your memory, for
example when you are revising for an exam, or when you are talking about it
in class. (It is also a good idea to turn lecture notes into summaries.)
b) When writing academic papers people often need to insert summaries of
something that they have read or heard. For example, you might want to
summarize the main points of a book that is relevant to your topic.

First steps to writing a summary

1. As you read, underline all the important points and and all the important
evidence. For example, you could look for all the topic sentences. Words that are
repeated several times are likely to be keywords. Transition words can help
understanding of the overall structure of a passage.

2. List or cluster the main idea of the whole piece, the main supporting ideas, and
the main evidence for each idea. Use of the same keywords or technical
expressions is probably unavoidable. However, be careful to express the ideas in
your own way, using your own vocabulary and expressions as much as possible,
rather than copying or just rearranging. Do not include too much detail.
EXAMPLE

Read the story in this web page

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/20/us/students-shall-not-download-yeah-
sure.html

Now the summary of this article.

Kate Zernike describes the attitudes of students at Pennsylvania State University


to illegal downloading of Internet material. She points out that while they are aware
of the illegality, they think that is all right to ignore the law on this issue, just as they
ignore the age limit on the consumption of alcohol. This attitude is encouraged by
various factors: the ease by which they are able to download, their assumption that
the Internet belongs to everyone, and the availability of Internet services on
campus and their importance to university life. Warnings against illegal
downloading from the university authorities have little effect because students do
not agree that such downloading causes any harm. In fact, they argue that they
spend money on bands that they would not know about had it not been for illegal
downloads. Unlike older people, they see no point in paying money to buy a
recording of a song. Threats of punishment make students more cautious, but in no
way lead them to stop downloading.

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