Summarizing

What is summarizing?

According to Buckley (2004) the Summarizing writing technique can be defined as reducing to one third or one quarter the original size of the text, but clearly articulating the author’s meaning, and retaining main ideas.

How to do it?

According to the authors Buckley and Hacker (2004, 2008) the steps for a good summary are the following.

• First, it is important to try to understand the author’s text purpose. By reading the original text the reader has to be aware of the author’s purpose when writing the text.
• Next, the reader should decide which points are crucial for an accurate summary of the text. It is important to discriminate the essential information that should be included in the summary.
• Then, the reader must edit the summary by deleting descriptions, supporting ideas that are not relevant for the text purpose.
• Finally, re read the original work is a good final step in order to be sure that the purpose of it is similar to the summary. It is vital to highlight that the supporting ideas, examples and other details should be included in the summary.