What Is Summarizing?

Recodo, Claire G. BSA 1
BC4
MWF- 03:00-04:00pm
What is a summarizing?
It is the source by restating its ideas in fewer words than the original.
The goal of writing a summary of an article, a single chapter or a whole book is to offer as accurately as possible the full sense of the original, but in a more condensed form. A summary restates the author's main point, purpose, intent and supporting details in your own words.
It involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main idea point(S). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material.
Summarizing is how we take larger selections of text and reduce them to their bare essentials: the gist, the key ideas, the main points that are worth noting and remembering. Webster's calls a summary the "general idea in brief form"; it's the distillation, condensation, or reduction of a larger work into its primary notions.
Why summarize?
The process of summarizing enables you to grasp the original text better, and the result shows the reader that you understand it as well. In addition to this, the knowledge you gained by summarizing makes it possible for you to analyze and critique the original text.
How to summarize?
There are several techniques to be used while summarizing a text and they all stress full understanding of a text and require the reader to spot the main or major ideas in it. But before we move any further, here are some useful tips about summarizing:
  * Restate, that is repeat the ideas of the source in different words and phrases
  * Do not add your own ideas, opinions or judgment of the arguments
  * Make it shorter than the source
 
<      Read the passage carefully.  Determine its structure.  Identify the author=s purpose in writing.  (This will help you distinguish between more important and less important information.)
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