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Jul 13, 2023 · Step 1. Take Notes While You’re Reading. Step 2. Write the Main Takeaways in Your Own Words. Step 3. Continue to Summarize Overtime. Conclusion. Why Write a Book Summary? I’ve found there are three key benefits to writing a book summary. First, writing a book summary helps you remember what you read.
Writing a good summary demonstrates that you clearly understand a text...and that you can communicate that understanding to your readers. A summary can be tricky to write at first because it’s tempting to include too much or too little information.
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Feb 6, 2024 · From how to start a summary of a book to perfectly concluding the summary, we’ve included everything. You’ll learn how to convey the heart of your story and paint a vivid picture of the world you’ve created. So let’s dive in to see practical tips and amazing book summary examples!
- Writing a Summary
- Informative and Descriptive Summaries
- The Summary as Writing
- Steps in Writing a Summary
- Method 1: Selection and Deletion
- COMMENTS ON THE SUMMARY
- WRITING ASSIGNMENT
- Method 2: Note Taking
- A STUDENT EXAMPLE FOR DISCUSSION
- Sample Summary
- COMMENTS ON THE SUMMARY
- WRITING ASSIGNMENT
- Method 3: Miniaturizing
- Sample Summary
- COMMENTS ON THE SUMMARY
- Methods of Choosing Material for the Summary
- Summary Length
- Length Depends on the Purpose of the Summary
- Knowing When to Summarize
- A STUDENT EXAMPLE FOR DISCUSSION
- COMMENTS ON THE SUMMARY
- WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
Whereas paraphrase writing leads you to examine all the details and nuances of a text, summary writing gives you an overview of the text's whole meaning. If you look over the whole text too rapidly, however, you may overlook important parts. Good summary writing, therefore, requires careful attention to the meaning and shape of the entire text. As ...
Having selected the material to include in your summary, you must then decide whether your summary will be informative or descriptive. Informative summaries adopt the tone of the original full text, simply presenting the information it contains in shorter form. Descriptive summaries adopt a more distant perspective, describing the original text rat...
The key to writing an effective summary is combining the material you choose to include into concise, coherent sentences and paragraphs. If your sentences are carelessly formed, not only will the summary be unreadable, you will also lose the connection among the pieces of information in the summary. You could simply wind up with tossed word salad. ...
Read the original carefully. Choose material for the summary. Decide whether your summary will be informative or descriptive. Rewrite the material in concise, coherent sentences and paragraphs. Identify the source of the text.
Because a summary moves quickly through the main points of the original, you need to focus on the most important ideas and details and leave out less important material. In preparing to write your summary, you can identify important material by underlining, circling, or highlighting it and can eliminate less important material by deleting it—crossi...
In the opening paragraphs of the article, Corcoran contrasts two types of coverage: serious reports on Hillary Clinton's career, views, and potential role as first lady and sensational reports on her superficial public image. In this section examples and details are deleted and key terms are circled in order to play up the general contrast between ...
Using the method of selection and deletion, summarize the continuation of Katherine Corcoran's article on the media's handling of Hillary Clinton. [COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL REMOVED]
Taking notes on the key ideas for each of the sections of the original reveals the logic of ideas in the whole piece and the connections among them. As you write down the key idea for each paragraph or so of the original, you will be concerned more with large chunks of meaning than with specific details. As you look over your notes, you may notice ...
This method may be useful when summarizing a piece that clearly develops an idea in each paragraph but seems to change from paragraph to paragraph, as a more complex idea builds from each of the parts or a large idea breaks into many subsections. The notes then become an outline of the flow of the author's thought. Before reading the sample and com...
“News-Making: The Pseudo-Event,” by Daniel Boorstin The hotel that, in order to boost its prestige and business, stages an anniversary celebration instead of improving its facilities exemplifies the pseudo-event, or false event, which now floods our experience. The news reports of the event, involving prominent citizens, make the hotel appear dist...
This excerpt develops a definition of the pseudo-event through the discussion of one main example. By developing a set of notes, I discovered how the more general opening and closing paragraphs led into and out of the specific case. In the first sentence of the summary, I was able to show that connection by directly tying the example to the general...
Using the method of note taking, summarize the next section of Boorstin's discussion of pseudo-events. It probes the historical causes of the rise of these media fictions. [COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL REMOVED]
As you read through the original, pay attention to the various parts of the structure: the order of ideas, their relative lengths, and their relationships. Think of a large photograph reduced to wallet size. In a relative sense all the parts remain the same; only the scale has changed. Notice the shape, flow, and overall impression of the original ...
“JAMA's Jam,” by Howard Wolinsky and Tom Brune When an unsolicited essay about how a doctor assisted in the mercy killing of a cancer patient was submitted to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the editor decided to publish the article. He published it without identifying the author, without veri-fying the facts, and without explainin...
The original selection has three sections: a description of the situation created by the receipt of the article, a discussion of the editor's choice and the choice's consequences, and a description of the article's appearance in the journal. Since the situation created by the article and the choice made in that situation are closely linked, I was a...
Select more important information and delete less important material. This method may be useful when clearly stated mains ideas in the piece are immediately followed by many details or examples. Take notes on the main ideas. This method may be useful when the development of a complex idea in the piece is treated in many subsections. The notes serve...
The sample summaries in this chapter are about one-quarter the length of the full versions; however, the relative length of any summary is not a fixed proportion. The compactness of the style of the original, the compactness of the summary writer's style, and the purpose of the summary all help determine how short the summary will be. If the orig...
How you will eventually use the summary determines what is important to include and what is unimportant. The relative distinction between major and minor pieces of information depends very much on the interests of those who you anticipate will read your summary. If the purpose of the summary is to give only a general idea of what is in the origin...
The most frequent and most important use of summary is to refer to another writer's work in the course of a new and original essay. Summary has the advantage over paraphrase in that it allows the writer to pick out and focus on only those aspects of the original that are most relevant to the new points being made. The flexibility of wording in a su...
Following is the opening of a paper by student Jennifer Contreras for a course in women's studies. Jennifer uses Katherine Corcoran's article as a jumping-off point for a reflective essay on the staying power of traditional gender stereotypes. She summarizes Corcoran's article to advance a new argument on a different topic. In order to make her poi...
Jennifer Contreras's summary of Corcoran's article is shaped by her interests and by the summary's function in the context of her essay. She is not concerned with sexism in the press in itself (as Corcoran is), but with sexism in the press as an example of sexism in American politics, or even more broadly, of sexism in American culture. As a result...
In a sentence or two, summarize each of the following paragraphs from books that might be used for college courses, as though you were going to use your summaries for study purposes. Universities, like cathedrals and parliaments, are a product of the Middle Ages. The Greeks and the Romans, strange as it may seem, had no universities in the sense ...
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A summary should contain: - the title of the article (or whatever work) you are summarizing and the author’s full name. - the author’s main ideas and supporting details.
ell as good writing practice. A summary has two aims: (1) to reproduce the overarching ideas in a. precise, specific language. When you summarize, you cannot rely on the language the author has used to develop his or her points, and you must find a way to give an overview of these points without your own s.
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SUMMARIZING FIVE KEYS TO WRITING EFFECTIVE SUMMARIES. An effective summary condenses a passage into a much shorter form, communicating only the essential facts of the original. Summarizing is not the same as paraphrasing, however: when you summarize something, you are not merely translating it word for word using synonyms and a thesaurus, but ...
