Bailey.Academic_Writing

1.9 Summary Writing
Making summaries is a common activity in everyday life. If a friend
asks you about a book you are reading, you do not tell her about
everything in the book. Instead, you make a summary of the most
interesting and important aspects. The same principle applies to
summarising in academic work.
1. Choose three of the topics below and write summaries in no more
than twelve words each.
Example:
Birmingham – Birmingham is a large industrial city in the
English west midlands.
a) Your home town
b) Bill Gates
c) Your academic subject
d) The last book you read
e) A film you saw recently
Look at the summaries you have written above. What are the
features of a successful summary?
2. Summary writing is an important skill in academic work.
Different kinds of summaries are needed in different
situations.
List as many study uses for summary writing as you can think
of.
making notes from lectures
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3. In essay writing students often have to summarise part of a
book or journal article.
The summary may be just one or two sentences, to explain the
main idea of the article, and perhaps compare it with another
summarised text, or it might be necessary to include much
more detail. In other words, a summary can range from 1–2%
of the original to more than 50%: summarising is a flexible tool.
At first students need to follow a series of steps to summarise
successfully. With practice the number of steps may be
reduced, as the process becomes more automatic.
Complete the list of stages in a successful summary by using
phrases from the box.