Lesson 3 Summary
Introduction
We all use summaries in our daily lives, however not everyone is a natural summarizer. This lesson provides you with a chance to learn the definition of a summary and how to create a summary. After the absorb learning activity, there will be a game for you to test for understanding. Let's get started!
The Learning Objectives
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After this lesson, you will know what a summary is.
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After this lesson, you will know how to create a summary.
Definition
A summary gives a recap of the main ideas, concepts, or points. Simply put, a summary is brief account of something. "A summary always covers the essential points of the original passage. It presents large chunks of information in short, cohesive sentences" (Iken Edu, 2012).
"A good summary has three basic characteristics: conciseness, accuracy, and objectivity" (Loren, 2008).
Steps for Writing a Summary
Basically, there are 6 steps: read the original materials, determine length, determine topic, take notes of key points or main ideas, finish your summary writing, and check the work.
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Read the original materials: Your first step is to become familiar with the content. What you can do is understand the content and complete some fact-checking to make sure it is not false information.
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Determine length: The next thing is deciding on the length of your summary based on the length of the content you want to summarize. "If the article is a few paragraphs, then a one paragraph summary should suffice. If it's five pages, then you'll most likely need a full page to summarize it. In general, the longer the article, the longer the summary." Of course, if you have a length stipulations from your editor to defer to for those expectations. (Janovsky, n.d.).
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Determine topic: This is where you need to find the main idea or core information. What is it about? What are the key words? Imagine someone asked what you were just reading. What would you say? Explain it in only one sentence. (Janovsky, n.d.).
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Take notes of key points or main ideas: This step can be omitted. For long or difficult-to-read content, you can take notes while reading. Notes are just for you, so they can be phrases or symbols, useful to you.
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Finish your summary writing: This is the part where you complete the summary writing. Use the notes if you took some. Remember 3 characteristics of a good summary include: conciseness, accuracy, and objectivity.
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Checking: At last, check your grammar, vocabulary, and format. You can get more information about checking in lesson 8.
Some tips
Here is a video introducing some tips on how to write a summary.
It is worth noting the video mentions it is best not to change the order of the narration. However, for news reporting, please feel free to change the order, as long as you follow the inverted pyramid structure, that is, the most important content goes first, the less important goes last.
Another tip I would like to share with you is if the content you need to summarize is too long, you can break it into pieces and summarize each piece, then Integrate what you have.
Game
Here is a game to help you check if you have learned about the summary. Some of these questions are from the video above, so make sure you watch the video first.
As you answer questions correctly you can select your tick tack toe position to earn the winning score. Take a screen capture showing your score and email it to me with your name. Please enjoy the game!
Rubric Quality:
As long as you win the game, you rock!
If you can't win the game, you can try again.
Summary
In conclusion, you learned the definition, steps, and tips for creating a summary. After this lesson, you gained summary skills. Remember, 3 characteristics of a good summary are: conciseness, accuracy, and objectivity.
In Lesson 4, you will use what you learned from this lesson and write a Twitter news release. It will be interesting! Looking forward to working with you in Lesson 5.
References
Iken Edu. (2012, June 25). Summary Writing | Learn How to Write Summary [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwEl-MiZH0E
Loren. (2018, February 16). How To Write An Effective Summary. Writing Power. http://blog.writingpower.net/2008/02/16/how-to-write-an-effective-summary/
Janovsky, A. (n.d.). How to Write a Summary of an Article. Study. https://study.com/academy/lesson/how-to-write-a-summary-of-an-article.html