![]() When you’ve finished reading your chunk of text, ask yourself how much you understood what you read, on a scale of 1-10.If you don’t understand something, re-read it or look it up.Stop reading if you zone out, and then restart the sentence.Notice when something is unclear to you.If you’re reading challenging material, you may end up spending more time comprehending the text than you spend writing your summary – this is okay. Writing a summary of a text is impossible if you don’t understand what you’re reading. One to three highlights per section of text is usually the right amount.The middle text often contains vocabulary, examples, and additional details.Main ideas are usually stated in the first few sentences and are repeated at the end of the paragraph.Here’s exactly how to use my highlight and rewrite strategy. Accompany most of your highlights with a few simple margin notes. Highlight and rewrite as you read.Īs you read your chunk of text, highlight or underline the main ideas you think are important. If you don’t comprehend what you’re reading, writing a summary is impossible. Working with small batches of text at a time is helpful for comprehension. Whether you’re reading an article, textbook, or book, read somewhere between one and two paragraphs at a time, depending on the difficulty of the material. For text that’s shorter in length, such as a paragraph, simply follow steps 2-5. The strategy I outline below is a complete summarization strategy for text that’s at least a page in length. Exact language and quotations from the passage.Names and dates, unless they are related to the main idea.Information that’s interesting to you but not important to the main idea.Descriptive language (keep your language simple + avoid adjectives).The author and title of the text, if you’re taking notes on an article or novel.Names of key people (usually just 1-2), and only if they’re connected to the main idea.The purpose of the passage (what does the author want you to learn?).This will be a broad idea like racism, finding one’s identity, political conflict, etc. The main topic or theme of the passage.A summary is NOT a shortened version of text, a paraphrase, or a play-by-play account of plot points.A summary IS a general description of the main idea of the text.Let’s start with a very important clarification about what a summary IS and is NOT. There are lots of misunderstandings about writing summaries. If you can’t summarize, all of those other skills become that much harder. The ability to summarize text is the foundation of SO many other academic skills such as taking notes, annotating, writing essays, writing reports, and studying. ![]() It’s even important outside of school, like in everyday conversations with people (Hey, what was that movie about? How’s that book you’re reading? Tell me about your day!). Knowing how to write a summary of a text is one of the most important skills for school and work.
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