Basics of Summarizing

Suppose you told your friend that you just watched a great film and your friend asks what the
story is. What would you do? Would you tell the whole story? Or just simply give the gist of the
story.

WHAT IS SUMMARIZING?

As an important skill in critical reading, summarizing is often used to determine the

essential ideas in a book, article, book chapter, an article or parts of an article. These essential
ideas include the gist or main idea, useful information, or key words or phrases that help you meet
your reading purpose. Summarizing is generally done after reading.

Summarizing is an important skill because it helps you:

 Deepen your understanding of the text;

 Learn to identify relevant information or key ideas;
 Combing details or examples that support the main idea/s
 Concentrate on the gist or main idea and key words presented in the text and
 Capture the key ideas in the text and put them together clearly and concisely

What is not summarizing?

You are NOT summarizing when you

 Write down everything;

 Write down ideas from the text word-for-word
 Write down incoherent and irrelevant ideas
 Write down ideas that are not stated in the text; or
 Write down a summary that has the same length or is longer than the original text

GUIDELINES IN SUMMARIZING

1. Clarify your purpose before you read,

2. Read the text and understand the meaning.

3. Select and underline or circle the key ideas and phrases while reading; another strategy is to
annotate the text.

4. Write all key ideas or phrases you identified on the margins or on your notebook in a bullet or
outline form.

5. Without looking at the text, identify the connections of these key ideas and phrases using a
concept map.

6. List your ideas in sentence form in a concept map.

7. Combine the sentences into paragraph. Use appropriate transitional devices to improve
cohesion.

8. Ensure that you do not copy a single sentence from the original text.

9. Refrain from adding comments about the text. Stick to the ideas it presents.

10. Edit the draft of your summary by eliminating redundant ideas.

11. Compare your output with the original text to ensure accuracy.

12. Record the details of the original source. (author’s name, date of publication, title, publisher,
place of publishing and URL, if online)

13. Format your summary properly.

FORMATS IN SUMMARIZING

1. Idea Heading Format

In this format, the summarized idea comes before the action.

2. Author-Heading Format

In this format, the summarized idea comes after the citation.

3. Date Heading Format

In this format, the summarized idea comes after the date when the material was
published.