A practical guide to understanding how to write a summary: a practical guide to learning how to make perfect summaries. Worked examples to take inspiration from.
How to make a summary
ow do you write a good summary , or at least a synthesis that is truly effective , without getting lost in the text and forgetting essential information? It may seem like a simple task to carry out, but summarizing a book or a text is a task not to be underestimated.
Summarizing is a very important exercise that will accompany you throughout your school years and that will also be useful in the future, perhaps at university. It is true that not everyone has the gift of synthesis, but it is also true that to make a good summary, you just need to follow simple instructions and rules
What is a summary?
When we talk about summary , we are referring to the reworking and synthesis of a larger text , in which to insert all the information that we consider to be fundamental and eliminate the superfluous. Writing a summary is one of the tasks that a student has to face from the beginning of his school career, in elementary school, and that accompanies him throughout his studies , even at university. The reason? The summary has not only the task of testing the student’s ability to understand the text and to summarize it , but it can offer him concrete help in studying: just like with concept maps , it allows us to report the most important concepts of what we need to memorize and to imprint them in our mind in an almost indelible way.
However, not everyone has the gift of synthesis and the students who are able to perfectly summarize the fundamental concepts of a text are not as many as one would expect.
In this guide we give you the tools to learn how to write a perfect summary , which will not only help you get a good grade but will also teach you how to use a truly valid study tool.
How to write a summary
Writing a summary means taking an original text and stripping it of its most superfluous content , leaving only what can be considered essential. In short: it means writing practically the same things, but more briefly, using about a third of the words . No, it is not something impossible or reserved only for brilliant minds: every student – even you! – can succeed in this “feat”.
First of all, get everything you need to start working, namely:
To make a summary, you must first equip yourself with some things. These are:
- Two sheets: one for the rough draft and one for the fair draft;
- A pen;
- A pencil;
- An eraser;
- The computer, in case you decide to print the text and not write it.
Practical advice
To write a summary in the best way, you will need to follow some practical advice, a sort of itinerary that will help you write a perfect summary:
- Read the text in question carefully
This is not a trivial and negligible step: carefully reading the passage that we have to summarize is essential to be able to do a good job. Do not limit yourself to a summary reading , but try to fully understand the meaning of what you are reading and, if necessary, reread it several times. - Underline the most important parts of the text
While reading, it is important that you understand what information is necessary to understand the text . To help you, you can use the so-called rule of the five English Ws, which is usually used when writing a newspaper article but which can also be useful in this case. What you will have to do is, while reading the text, answer these questions: who , what , when , where , why , and underline the corresponding answers in the text. - Divide the text into sequences
Once you have read the text, divide it into sequences, that is, into those minimal narrative units, in themselves complete and autonomous in terms of content, which constitute the passage in its entirety. In the margin of the text, try to give a title to each sequence that summarises its content.
Tips for writing a good summary
Once you have completed the preliminary operations you will be ready to write your summary .
Arm yourself with paper, pen and a little patience and, above all, don’t be discouraged: since it is a summary, the text you have to write must not be that long. The right length is less than 1/3 of that of the original passage , so the work you have to do will not take up too much of your time, nor will it cost you too much effort.
Start writing your summary by referring to what you have underlined in the text and noted in the margin after dividing it into sequences. You can also think about making an outline , which will form the backbone of your summary. In this case, it will be simpler than usual: the key concepts of your outline will be made up, in broad terms, of the very titles you previously gave in the division into sequences.
At this point, you can transform your outline into a real summary, developing the various passages (not too broadly, remember that it is always a synthesis) and trying to give the text its own consequentiality. This means that you will have to pay attention to creating a speech that follows a logical thread , connecting the different parts of the speech through the use of temporal markers (at the beginning, before, then, after, later, finally) and connectives (prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs ) to correctly articulate the speech.
Rules to keep in mind
To be able to write a summary correctly, we recommend that you follow these simple rules:
- Eliminate adjectives, examples, parentheses and anything that is not strictly necessary for understanding the text.
- Turn direct speech into indirect form
- Speak in third person
- Create short , not too complicated sentences
- Use simple language , free of difficult-to-understand terms.
- Always use the same verb tense throughout the summary.
- Do not enter your opinion and judgment about the text
Once you have completed the summary, all you have to do is reread it: your task will be to check that there are no spelling mistakes and that the speech flows smoothly, with its own logical sense and that no passage is missing.
