Summarize to deepen your understanding - Reading and writing critically - Academic Reading and Writing

Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

Summarize to deepen your understanding
Reading and writing critically
Academic Reading and Writing

When you summarize, you test your understanding of a text by putting the main ideas in your own words — concisely, objectively, and accurately — and distinguishing between the text’s major and minor points. You’ll find advice for summarizing effectively below.

Here is Emilia Sanchez’s summary of the article in 4a. Notice how Sanchez uses a neutral, objective tone and third-person point of view to keep the focus on the text (as in the highlighted phrases).

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HOW TO

Summarize effectively

1. Mention the title of the text, the name of the author, and the author’s thesis in the first sentence.

2. Maintain a neutral tone; be objective and avoid adding your own views to the summary.

3. Keep your focus on the text. Don’t state the author’s ideas as if they were your own.

4. Use the third-person point of view and the present tense to present the author’s ideas: Taylor argues . . . , Taylor explains . . . (If you are writing in APA style, see 61c.) Because the ideas are the author’s, avoid writing sentences that begin with The article says . . .

5. Put all or most of your summary in your own words. If you borrow a phrase or a sentence from the text, put it in quotation marks and give the page number in parentheses. Use a signal phrase to introduce any borrowed language: According to Singh, immigration data “reflect a slow move away from . . .”

6. Limit yourself to presenting the text’s key points, not every detail.