A summary is a short retelling of a longer written passage, containing the author’s most

important ideas. Summarizing helps improve both your reading and writing skills.

It is important to understand the difference between a summary and a paraphrase. A

paraphrase is simply a rewriting of a passage in your own words. A summary, on the other hand,
contains only the main idea and the supporting ideas of a passage. A summary will be much shorter than
a paraphrase.

What is summarizing?

A summary is a short retelling of a longer written passage, containing the author’s most
important ideas. Summarizing helps improve both your reading and writing skills.

A summary contains only the main idea and the supporting ideas of a passage.

Summarizing reduces a text to its main idea and necessary information. Summarizing differs
from paraphrasing in that summary leaves out details and terms.

Summarizing is to take larger selections of text and reduce them to their basic essentials: the
gist, the key ideas, the main points that are worth noting and remembering.

As with directly quoting and paraphrasing, summarizing requires you to cite your sources
properly to avoid "accidental" plagiarism.

Why is summarizing important?

✓Deepen your understanding of the text.
✓Learn to identify relevant information.
✓Concentrate on the gist or main idea.
✓Capture the key ideas in the text and put them together clearly and concisely.

Summarizing helps you understand and learn important information by reducing information to
its key ideas. Summaries can be used for annotation and study notes as well as to expand the depth of
your writing.

Things to keep in mind when you are summarizing:

1. Clarify your purpose before you read.

2. Read the text and understand the meaning.

3. Select and underline or circle the key ideas.

4. Annotate key

How to Summarize

1. Preview and read. Preview and read the paragraph closely. You probably will find that you need to
read the paragraph more than one time.

2. Make a list or outline. Determine the main idea and the supporting details of the paragraph. Make a
list or outline of these ideas. Be sure to use your own words.
3. Write a summary. Using your list, write a summary of the paragraph. State the main ideas, followed
by important ideas. Limit your summary to just one or two sentences.

4. Read aloud and correct. Read the summary aloud, correcting any mistakes.

To summarize, you must read a passage closely, finding the main ideas and supporting ideas.
Then you must briefly write down those ideas in a few sentences or a paragraph.

With the tips above, you will no longer worry whenever you need to summarize because it is
your one stop solution to having a fantastic summary that offer nice details to readers. Follow the tips
and you will not make mistakes.
Another 5 Easy Techniques in Summarizing Various Academic Texts

Technique 1: Somebody Wanted But So Then

“Somebody Wanted But So Then” is an excellent summarizing strategy for stories. Each word represents
a key question related to the story's essential elements:

 Somebody: Who is the story about?

 Wanted: What does the main charter want?

 But: Identify a problem that the main character encountered.

 So: How does the main character solve the problem?

 Then: Tell how the story ends.

Here is an example of this strategy in action:

 Somebody: Little Red Riding Hood

 Wanted: She wanted to take cookies to her sick grandmother.

 But: She encountered a wolf pretending to be her grandmother.

 So: She ran away, crying for help.

 Then: A woodsman heard her and saved her from the wolf.38

After answering the questions, combine the answers to form a summary:

Little Red Riding Hood wanted to take cookies to her sick grandmother, but she encountered a
wolf. He got to her grandmother’s house first and pretended to be the old woman. He was going to eat
Little Red Riding Hood, but she realized what he was doing and ran away, crying for help. A woodsman
heard the girl’s cries a

Technique 2: SAAC Method

The SAAC method is another useful technique for summarizing any kind of text (story, article,
speech, etc). SAAC is an acronym for "State, Assign, Action, Complete." Each word in the acronym refers
to a specific element that should be included in the summary.

 State: name of the article, book, or story

 Assign: the name of the author

 Action: what the author is doing (example: tells, explains)

 Complete: complete the sentence or summary with keywords and important details

This method is particularly helpful for students who are learning the format of a summary and
need reminders to include the title and author's name. However, SAAC does not include clear guidance
about which details to include, which some students might find tricky. If you use SAAC with your
students, remind them of the types of details that belong in a summary before instructing them to work
independently.

Here is an example of SAAC in action:

 State: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

 Assign: Aesop (a Greek storyteller)

 Action: tells

 Complete: what happens when a shepherd boy repeatedly lies to the villagers about seeing a wolf

Use the four SAAC cues to write out a summary of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" n complete
sentences:

The Boy Who Cried Wolf, by Aesop (a Greek storyteller), tells what happens when a shepherd
boy repeatedly lies to the villagers about seeing a wolf. After a while, they ignore his false cries. Then,
when a wolf really does attack, they don’t come to help him.

Technique 3: 5 W's, 1 H

The 5 W's, 1 H strategy relies on six crucial questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. These
questions make it easy to identify the main character, the important details, and the main idea.39

 Who is the story about?

 What did they do?

 When did the action take place?

 Where did the story happen?

 Why did the main character do what he/she did?

 How did the main character do what he/she did?

Try this technique with a familiar fable such as "The Tortoise and the Hare."

 Who? The tortoise

 What? He raced a quick, boastful hare and won.

 When? When isn’t specified in this story, so it’s not important in this case.

 Where? An old country road

 Why? The tortoise was tired of hearing the hare boast about his speed.

 How? The tortoise kept up his slow but steady pace.

Then, use the answers to the 5 W's and 1 H to write a summary of incomplete

sentences.

Tortoise got tired of listening to Hare boast about how fast he was, so he

challenged Hare to a race. Even though he was slower than Hare, Tortoise won by

keeping up his slow and steady pace when Hare stopped to take a nap.

Technique 4: First, Then, Finally

The "First Then Finally" technique helps students summarize events in

chronological order. The three words represent the beginning, main action, and

conclusion of a story, respectively:

 First. What happened first? Include the main character and mainevent/action.

 Then. What key details took place during the event/action?

 Finally. What were the results of the event/action?

Here is an example using "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."

First, Goldilocks entered the bears' home while they were gone. Then, she ate their

food, sat in their chairs, and slept in their beds. Finally, she woke up to find the bears

watching her, so she jumped up and ran away.

Technique 5: Give Me the Gist

When someone asks for "the gist" of a story, they want to know what the story

is about. In other words, they want a summary—not a retelling of every detail. To

introduce the gist method, explain that summarizing is just like giving a friend the gist

of a story, and have your students tell each other about their favorite books or movies

in 15 seconds or less. You can use the gist method as a fun, quick way to practice

summarizing on a regular basis.