4.1: Introduction to Summarizing--Reading

Introduction to Summarizing

In the previous section, “Introduction to Critical Reading,” you were introduced to writing a summary as a tool for understanding a reading. Summarizing is not only key to strengthening your reading comprehension skills, but it’s also important to developing arguments in your own writing.

For example, if you’re working on an essay about affordable housing in Chicago, you will also be researching articles about the topic. In order to make your own argument about affordable housing in Chicago, you will have to understand what the articles you’ve researched have to say about this topic. Therefore, it is important to be able to summarize what each article you research is about.

Being able to clearly state what a reading is about will help you develop your own writing because you’ll know how to better organize your sources and what information to pull from your sources to include in your essay. Additionally, some forms of writing genres require summaries within them. For example, a tv show review will often include a brief summary of the episode that the author is reviewing before offering their analysis on the episode. We’ll talk more about different writing genres in the next section.

What makes a good summary?

You most likely interact with summaries in your day-to-day life without realizing it. Think about the last time you hung out with a friend, and they told you a story to catch up on their life. For example, your friend tells you about why they quit their job, or about a date that they went on. Your friend is summarizing events for you. Because they are your friend, chances are you’re already invested in their summary, but think about what else makes listening to them interesting.

Now think about a friend who is harder to follow when they are telling you a story. Because they are your friend, you are still invested in what they have to say, but what makes it difficult to follow their summary?

Chances are the friend whose story is easy to follow is staying on topic, clearly explains who/what/where/why in their story, and easily transitions from one point to the other. They may also share important details without saying every single detail. Meanwhile, the other friend whose story is harder to follow may be all over the place in their retelling. What both friends have to share with you may be interesting, but one is easier to understand than the other. The same can be said about written summaries within an academic setting.

What are some mistakes to avoid when writing a summary?

• Avoid list summaries. A common mistake that students make when writing a summary is to list a bunch of things without connecting them to one another. These sorts of summaries can be boring to read or listen to! Avoid this type of pattern in your own summary: “And then he says…” “He also says…” “Also he argues…” “And his other point is…”

• Avoid giving too little information. Make sure you provide context within your summary, so that your ready understands what you are summarizing.

• Avoid quoting whole sentences. While quotations from sources are a great tool to use in essays, summaries are not a place for them. You should be able to summarize the reading without quoting entire chunks of the reading.

• Avoid bringing in ideas that are not in the source itself. While comparing and contrasting information from different sources is something you may do within an essay, a summary of a reading should stick to the reading itself. This is not the place to bring in ideas from another article or from someone who previously heard speak on the same topic.

How do you write a successful summary?

• Use the author’s name and article’s title in your summary. Even though your instructor may be the person assigning you a reading, you should still include the author's name and the text’s title. This makes for clear writing. This will also be a useful skill to practice for when you include summarizing within an essay. Otherwise your reader may not understand who you’re referring to.

• Identify the author’s main claim. What is the author’s main argument? As stated in the previous section, “Introduction to Critical Reading” the text’s title is a good place to start. It can often tell you the perspective that the author most likely will expand on. Additionally, authors will often include their claim within the first two paragraphs.

• Include the author’s main points that support their claim. Review how the reading is organized. What subheadings does the author use? What does each paragraph focus on? Do some paragraphs focus on the same thing? This will help you identify an author’s support for their main claim.

• Use transition words and phrases. Transition words and phrases help with the flow of your summary. For some examples of transition words and phrases, click here.

• Use active voice. You’ve probably seen “passive voice” scribbled on an essay before, but what is the difference between active and passive voice?

  • Passive voice: The subject of a sentence receives the action.

    • Example: The door was opened by the teacher.

  • Active voice: The subject of a sentence performs the action.

    • Example: The teacher opened the door.

  • Passive voice is ideal for some writing situations, use active voice when writing a summary.

• Vary your sentence structure. When you vary your sentence structure, you keep your writing fresh and interesting. Use a variety of sentence lengths (short, medium long) and a variety of sentence types. The table below notes 4 types of sentence structures that you could use in your writing:

Simple Sentences:	Has 1 independent clause (subject + verb = expresses a complete thought) Example: Rodolfo went to the grocery store.
Compound Sentences:	Has 2 or more independent clauses joined by a conjunction or semicolon. Example: Rodolfo went to the grocery store, but Adriana went to work instead. Rodolfo went to the grocery store; Adriana went to work instead.
Complex Sentences:	Has 1 independent clause and 1 dependent clause. Example: Rodolfo came home after he went to the grocery store.
Compound Complex Sentences:	Has at least 2 independent clauses and 1 or more dependent clauses. Example: Rodolfo left the grocery store after he got an emergency text from Adriana but later returned because he lost his wallet.

• Be concise. Summaries should be on the shorter side, otherwise, you risk giving too many details. Ideally a summary should be between 1 – 2 paragraphs.

How do you decide what to include in a summary versus what to leave out?

You want your reader to understand the overall picture of what you are summarizing. The texts that you will be reading throughout your academic career will most likely include specific examples and quotes from people in the topic’s field.

A summary focuses on the main picture:

author’s argument + main points that support their argument

While the author of a text may choose to provide many details that support their argument, these details don’t have a place in a summary of the reading. When deciding how to summarize a reading, look back through your notes and annotations to separate what is part of the bigger picture and what is a detail.