2.3 - Drafting and Revising

Academic summaries help you demonstrate that you’ve understood something you’ve read, and test your ability to communicate what you’ve learned to an audience who is unfamiliar with the text. As a distinct genre, your audience will have specific expectations of an academic summary. Academic summaries help audiences to understand long, often complicated texts without having read them. They can also help audiences decide if they want to read the complete article.

What to Include in an Academic Summary

As with other genres, your audience will expect there to be certain information present in your academic summary. This information will help you achieve your purpose (to explain and describe) more effectively.

If your purpose is to demonstrate understanding and describe the article to your audience, then you’ll need to make sure you include enough information so that they get a complete picture of what the author said. There is some basic information that every academic summary should include:

• Author, place, and time of publication: This information is usually located at the beginning of the article. Don’t forget to include when and where the article was published! This is important contextual information for your audience because it tells your audience what was happening around the time of publication, and what type of publication accepted their ideas.

• Main idea: This includes both the topic of the article, and the author’s point. What is their argument or claim?

• Key points: The key points help the author to demonstrate why their argument or claim is true. They may help the audience understand the topic better, or they may be persuade the audience to agree with the author’s view of the topic.

• Connections between ideas. Remember that a summary is not a bullet-point list of the ideas in the article. In order to give your audience a complete idea of what the author intended to say, explain how the ideas are related to one another by using transition phrases.

Remember: An academic summary helps your audience understand WHAT the article said, WHO said it, WHEN they said it, and WHERE they said it; concepts like the rhetorical situation helps you answer WHY and HOW. Do not confuse the two! Often, the elements of the rhetorical situation are unnecessary when writing an academic summary.

Academic summaries are more than a list of information; your audience will have other expectations of the tone, voice, length, and format of your summary. Below are some other characteristics to keep in mind.

Concise. All summaries are concise, meaning they are shorter than the original text. They will typically take complex ideas and put them into fewer words. After all, why would someone read a summary of an article that’s longer than the article itself?

Objective. A summary is about description, not evaluation. While you may have strong feelings about what the author wrote, the audience just wants to know what was written. Don’t forget your purpose for writing!

Accurate. Readers will expect your summary to accurately represent the ideas, opinions, facts, and judgements made in the text. Don’t misrepresent or manipulate the author’s words. Being accurate relies heavily on your ability to understand the article, so you may need to reread or revisit your notes to ensure accuracy.

Comprehensive. A summary covers the entire text. Don’t avoid sections you didn’t understand, or didn’t think were important. Each key point should be present in your summary.

Include attribution. Your summary describes someone else’s ideas, and not your own. Whether you are writing in MLA, APA, or another citation style, you need to be very clear that any facts, opinions, or ideas are coming from the author of the article that you are reading. Never assume that your audience knows where information is coming from!

Clear to an audience who has not read the source text. Check your summary for any complex terms, ideas, or references that your audience might be unfamiliar with or may have a difficult time understanding. If the author explained those ideas to you, it’s likely that you will need to explain them to your audience as well. Remember, you know far more about the text than your audience does, so it’s your job to anticipate when they may or may not understand.

Before you begin the summary process, use the active close processes described in this chapter to develop a good grasp of the text you have selected.

Prepare to Summarize

Select one of the following texts to serve as the source for your summary:

• Peter Elbow, “The Doubting Game and the Believing Game”

• Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”

• Vershawn Ashanti Young, “Should Writers Use They Own English?”

TIP: If you are summarizing an academic research article, one good strategy is to read around the edges. For instance, read the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion first to help you build a better understanding or model of what the text is about. Then you can return to the text and read the material in the middle.

Gather Information for the Summary

After using an active reading process technique, reread the article you plan to summarize. This might seem unnecessary. However, you read the article the first time to familiarize yourself with the content. Summarizing requires a more detailed examination of the text to understand the relationship between the ideas: major points, minor details, and how all the major points are connected.

When summarizing, you are reading for a different purpose; your goal is to search for the main ideas, sift out the details, and express the main ideas in your own words.

TIP: You may want to use the "Summary Notes Template" (below) to record information as you prepare to write your summary.

Take Notes to Summarize

As you develop your summarization skills, having a template that guides you as you work through the process can be helpful. The Summary Notes Template guides you as you begin to distinguish between a text’s major and minor points.

Distinguish Between the Major and Minor Points

Re-read the text. Write down the major supporting point or main idea from each paragraph or section in your own words. Writing an idea in your own words is called paraphrasing. Sometimes, a single paragraph may have its own major supporting point; however, if the paragraphs are short, consider grouping related paragraphs together to determine the major point.

Determine the thesis, or overall main idea, of the text. 

This should be the central point of the text. The major supporting points should relate to the thesis.

Write the Summary

Now that you have collected the information to include in your summary, you can use your Summary Notes to draft your summary. Below is guidance for writing the summary, followed by an example from the article “Students perceive themselves as a ‘math person’ or a ‘reading person’ early on.”

• How should you organize the summary?

  • Start with a topic sentence that states the title, author, and thesis (overall main idea) of the article. This is how you let the reader know what you are summarizing and give credit to the author.

  • Follow the topic sentence with the major supporting points (paragraph-level main ideas or section main ideas). Present them in the order of importance. Note that this order may not be the same as you read these points in your source text.

  • The last major supporting point may be general enough to conclude the paragraph. If not, then you can rewrite the thesis of the article.

• What writing style should be used?

  • Don’t expect to simply copy and paste the sentences from your Summary Notes document; the result will be a disjointed, choppy summary. Use the following guidelines so that all the sentences make sense and flow from one to the next in your paragraph.

  • Use the present tense when referring to what the author “writes” (not the past tense “wrote”).

  • Use the third person (e.g. Sirui Wan explains that students develop a preference for math or reading early in school.). This makes it clear that the ideas are not yours but belong to the author. Refer to the author by name, as “the author,” as “the writer,” or by the appropriate pronoun (he/she/they) if known. It is common practice to use both of the author’s names (Sirui Wan) the first time you mention them but only to use the family name or surname (Wan) after that point. In the summary, do not use first-person pronouns (I/me/my/we/our/us) or second-person (you/your).

  • Vary the verbs in the summary. Do not repeat the same verbs (e.g. “says” and “writes”) throughout the summary. The Summary Notes Template includes a list of possible verbs, but these are not the only ones. Make sure the verb fits the context. For example, do not use the verb argue unless the author presents an opinion.

Once you have completed the first draft of your summary, you should evaluate it and revise it based on this process.  Use the following checklist to read and evaluate your summary yourself. All answers should be “yes.” If the answer to any question is “no,” then you should revisit that aspect of your summary. 

Self-Assessment Questions

• Does the summary have a topic sentence that states the article’s author, title, and thesis (overall main idea)?

• Is the summary complete (all major supporting points/paragraph-level main ideas included)?

• Is all of the information accurate?

• Are the major supporting points ordered by importance? Remember that this may not be the order in which you find them in the source text.

• Are all ideas paraphrased?  Quotes should not be used in the summary.

• Is the author referenced first by the full name and, after that, by last name (or “the author” or “the writer” or appropriate pronoun) throughout the summary?

• Are unnecessary details excluded from the summary?

• Are the student’s opinion statements excluded from the summary?

• Is the bibliography included, and is it correct?

Once you’ve completed your self-evaluation and revisions, the next step is to participate in peer review. The goal of this process is for writers to take ownership of revision by targeting their weak spots, and for reviewers to give focused, practical advice that helps improve the draft.

Directions for Writers: After completing your self-evaluation, identify at least three areas of concern in your draft. Use the commenting feature of your word processor to highlight these areas and ask specific, advice-seeking questions for your peer reviewer.

1. • Your questions should seek advice, not evaluation.

   • Avoid yes/no questions; instead, frame questions that invite suggestions.

Examples of good peer review questions:

1. • • “Does my topic sentence clearly state the author, title, and thesis? How could I make it clearer?”

     • “Is this supporting point explained in enough detail to make sense to someone who hasn’t read the article?”

     • “Am I paraphrasing this point well, or does it sound too close to the original wording?”

     • “Do I stay focused here, or should I cut something to keep the summary concise?”

Be sure to tag all your questions in the margins before sharing your draft with your peer reviewer.

Directions for Reviewers: Choose up to three of your classmates' drafts to review.  As you read each draft, focus on responding to the writer’s specific questions in the margins. 

1. • Give concrete, constructive advice that directly addresses the writer’s concerns.

   • Suggest possible revisions, rephrasings, or strategies for improvement.

   • Be supportive: frame your feedback as helpful suggestions, not judgments.

Examples of good reviewer responses:

1. • “You do have the author and title, but the thesis isn’t fully clear. Maybe add a phrase like ‘she argues that…’ to make it sharper.”

   • “This part makes sense, but since your audience hasn’t read the article, you might explain the term the author uses here.”

   • “This paraphrase is close to the source. You might try rewording by flipping the sentence structure.”

   • “I think this detail could be cut because it’s not one of the article’s main ideas.”

After receiving feedback from your peer reviewer, your next step is to evaluate that feedback and decide how to use it to strengthen your draft. Follow this process to ensure you are not just correcting mistakes, but actually making your summary clearer, more accurate, and more effective for your audience:

Review the Feedback Carefully

• • Read through all of your peer’s comments, especially the responses to your own guiding questions.

  • Make a list (or highlight in a different color) of the most useful advice.

  • Identify which suggestions you will use and why. (Not every suggestion must be followed—but you should be able to explain your decision.)

Prioritize Revisions

Focus on big-picture changes before making small edits. Ask yourself:

• • Does my topic sentence clearly name the author, title, and thesis?

  • Do I include all the main ideas, in a logical order?

  • Are there places where I need to clarify or expand for an audience unfamiliar with the text?

  • Are there sentences that need to be rephrased for clearer paraphrasing?

  • Once those larger issues are addressed, move on to smaller details like word choice, grammar, and conciseness.

Revise Strategically

Work through your draft section by section. For each revision, ask:

• What problem am I fixing? (clarity, accuracy, organization, conciseness, paraphrasing, etc.)

• How does this revision improve the summary for my audience?

Make changes directly in the draft, but keep your peer’s comments visible so you can check that you’ve addressed them.

This chapter contains materials from: 

• First Year Composition by Leslie Davis and Kiley Miller; produced and distributed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-SA) by Colorado State University.