1. SUMMARY WRITING A skill required for all students at all levels of education.

2. WHAT IS A SUMMARY?  Taking a large quantity of information, understanding what it means and condensing it into a shorter version.

3. WHY SUMMARIZE?  Shorter version allows for you to have an easy reference without having to memorize long passages or complex statistics  For example, notes you take in class are a summary of the class

4. WHY IS THIS SO HARD?  The Big Decision: What do you include and what do you leave out?  Remember, when you are writing a summary, it is important that you keep the intent of the author as well.  You will need to read the entire article or passage first prior to summarizing.

5. STRATEGY ONE  Look for main ideas or topic sentences and key words used throughout the article  Make sure to read the entire article and make sure you understand everything the article talks about.  If you do not understand something, what can you do?

6. STRATEGY TWO  Cross out information that is useless and underline or highlight the most important points (these could be just words or phrases)  Here is where the KEY WORDS and MAIN IDEAS are important

7. STRATEGY THREE  Write in YOUR OWN WORDS  No opinions should appear in the summary  Plagiarism is illegal and can get you kicked out of college! (In High School, you will earn a Zero.)

8. IMPORTANT INFORMATION  Summary Length:  ¼ of the original article, paper, or passage  Approximately how long would a summary be for a three page article?

9. SUMMARY PRACTICE

10. POORLY WRITTEN SUMMARY

11. WHY?

12. WELL-WRITTEN SUMMARY

13. WHY?  ¼ length of original piece  Keeps in the same order  Has same tone of piece  Is cited properly