As an important skill in critical reading, summarizing is often used to determine the essential ideas in a book, article, book chapter, an article. These essential ideas include the gist or main idea, useful information or key words or phrases that help you meet your reading purposes. Summarizing is generally done after reading. However, it can be done as well while reading a text.

Summarizing is an important skill because it helps you…

• • deepen your understanding of the text;

  • learn to identify relevant information or key ideas;

  • combine 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.

1. Clarify your purpose before you read.

2. Read the text and understand the meaning. Do not stop reading until you understand the message conveyed by the author. Locate the gist or main idea of the text, which can usually be found at the beginning, in the middle, or in the end.

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

4. Write all the key ideas and 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, graphic organizer or thinking map.

6. List your ideas in sentences into a paragraph. Use appropriate transitional devices to improve cohesion.

7. Combine the sentences into a 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/s, date of publication, title, publisher, place of publishing, and URL [if online]). It is not necessary to indicate the page number/s of the original text in citing sources in summaries.

There are three formats that you may use in writing summaries are idea heading, author heading, and date heading.

A reporting verb is a word used to discuss another person’s writings or assertions. They are generally used to incorporate the source to the discussion in the text.

In summarizing, you are highly encouraged to vary the verbs you use to make your writing more interesting and to show importance to each of your sources. You can use either the past or the present tense depending on your meaning. Using the past tense usually indicates that you view the idea to be outdated and therefore want to negate it. On the other hand, using the present tense generally indicates that you view the idea to be relevant or agreeable.

Hyland (1999) lists a frequency of reporting verbs used according to discipline.