Summary Writing

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Summary Writing
Overview
When a writer paraphrases the original sentence, s/he uses her own words to restate the sentence by changing the words but retaining the intended meaning. Like a paraphrase, you write a summary in your own words.  You write a summary when you want to restate the point(s) of a paragraph or even a long piece of text.  The only difference is that instead of reflecting the logic and pattern of the original text, a summary succinctly states the central points of the original text.  A summary is written for the reader who has not read the original text, but wants to know its central points. I will give you some tips on summary writing later, but for now let’s go over some basic principles that you will need to adhere to while summarizing a lecture or the original text.

Objectivity
As I mentioned earlier, the main purpose of summary writing is to give the reader the essential information contained in a lecture or an article without stating your own opinion.  In other words, you act as an objective information processor, condensing information into a short, useful form for the reader without ever hinting at or giving your own opinion.

Application
You might be wondering why I am talking about summary writing.  You might be asking yourself why you need to learn about summarizing.  There are many reasons why you should learn to summarize.  Your supervisor might ask you to summarize a year’s worth of memos on your productivity.  S/he might need this summary for your annual performance review.  A nurse might need to summarize a hospital patient’s history for the doctor.  A supervisor might need to condense an article on conflict and resolution for busy coworkers.  There are numerous situations that arise every day which require the skillful use of summary writing.

As you learn to summarize, you will discover that sometimes a good summary is more useful than a magazine or an entire article.  There are two main advantages to writing a summary.  First, a summary is more portable than a magazine, a journal, or a book.  Second, it takes much less time to read a summary than it does a full-length article.  Basically, a summary should include the central points of the original text so that the reader can know about the article without having to read it. 

Implications for Your Learning
As we have discussed so far, there are many advantages to summary writing.  I have already pointed out a few, but to be more specific, here are some important implications for your learning:

Ø  if you are summarizing a lecture, it improves your English listening comprehension skills (you need to take down the main ideas so that you can summarize the lecture in reference to your notes)
Ø  if you are summarizing a paragraph or an article, it improves your English reading comprehension skills (you need to understand what the original text is about before you can restate its central points, right?)
Ø  you improve your vocabulary as you need to use different language in order to present the same idea
Ø  last but not least, you improve your writing prowess in English by constantly writing, revising, and rewriting your summary.  Keep in mind that your classmate will read your summary and give feedback on organization, content, and structure to help you rewrite it. 




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