Why is summary writing important




















Think about it! What are the most important facts about your previous career? There is no single piece of advice on what to write but make it personal and make it different. Make it short enough remembering that recent studies show that we will lose interest, in seconds, if the content is not engaging and make it relevant and be prepared to adapt it when necessary. Talk about your accomplishments rather than responsibilities. But most of all, put the effort into it like it was the only and most important thing that counts!

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. Click the button below to agree to the use of cookies, and remove this message. You may include some very brief summary within a literature paper, but only as much as necessary to make your own interpretation, your thesis, clear.

It is important to remember that a summary is not an outline or synopsis of the points that the author makes in the order that the author gives them. Instead, a summary is a distillation of the ideas or argument of the text. It is a reconstruction of the major point or points of development of a text, beginning with the thesis or main idea, followed by the points or details that support or elaborate on that idea. If a text is organized in a linear fashion, you may be able to write a summary simply by paraphrasing the major points from the beginning of the text to the end.

However, you should not assume that this will always be the case. Not all writers use such a straightforward structure. They may not state the thesis or main idea immediately at the beginning, but rather build up to it slowly, and they may introduce a point of development in one place and then return to it later in the text.

In order to write a good summary, you may have to gather minor points or components of an argument from different places in the text in order to summarize the text in an organized way. A point made in the beginning of an essay and then one made toward the end may need to be grouped together in your summary to concisely convey the argument that the author is making. In the end, you will have read, digested, and reconstructed the text in a shorter, more concise form.

There are many instances in which you will have to write a summary. You may be assigned to write a one or two page summary of an article or reading, or you may be asked to include a brief summary of a text as part of a response paper or critique.

Also, you may write summaries of articles as part of the note-taking and planning process for a research paper, and you may want to include these summaries, or at least parts of them, in your paper. The writer of a research paper is especially dependent upon summary as a means of referring to source materials. Through the use of summary in a research paper, you can condense a broad range of information, and you can present and explain the relevance of a number of sources all dealing with the same subject.

You may also summarize your own paper in an introduction in order to present a brief overview of the ideas you will discuss throughout the rest of the paper.

Depending on the length and complexity of the original text as well as your purpose in using summary, a summary can be relatively brief—a short paragraph or even a single sentence—or quite lengthy—several paragraphs or even an entire paper.

A good summary should be comprehensive, concise, coherent, and independent. This is a good way to help expand their vocabularies. Or would you use different words that mean about the same thing? Teach the language of summaries. Put any needed final touches on the summary, such as an overarching idea to lead with.

Also teach concluding sentences that restate the main idea. Give out another short reading selection. Have students work on reading and marking the selection and then writing their summaries by themselves this time or in pairs. It might be helpful at this point to instruct students to first do the reading and marking, and then close the reading, and without referring to it, tell their partner what it was about.

The partner can take notes on the retelling, and then they can compare it to the original, making adjustments, such as adding missed main points or deleting details. However, it is a skill worth the time and effort as students will use it throughout their academic careers and the benefits it provides in reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. It also provides students with a great study skill to help them review information before a big test. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below.

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