A summary is another common and acceptable way to include another author's work into your own writing. It is similar to a paraphrase in that your should write it in your own words, however, unlike a paraphrase, it is usually much shorter than the original text, and generally includes only the main ideas of the entire source text.
SUMmarize it
Shorter than the text
Use your own words
Main ideas only
There are 9 steps to writing a good summary:
- mention the author and the title of the article
- identify the source text's main idea at the beginning of the summary
- include all the main points of the source text, but...
- ...leave out the unnecessary details
- write the ideas in the order in which they appeared in the article
- keep the author’s meaning the same
- use your own sentence structure
- use your own words
- use citation expressions to refer to the author’s ideas
View the clip below and complete the excercises in the lesson document.
How to Write a Summary
Students will learn the important do's and don'ts of summary writing and be able to read a text and summarize it more effectively.