SUMMARIZING

MELC: Uses various techniques in summarizing a

variety of an academic text (S1/2 1st Quarter/ 3rd
Quarter)
 ACTIVITY

• Load up your knowledge in summarizing!

• Your reading journey starts here. Read the following statements
below and identify the situations that describe best practices in
summarizing. Then, write S if the statement portrays good
summarizing and N if not.
• _____1. Sean copied everything from the book.
• _____2. Tomas extracted the key ideas in the text.
• _____3. Red concentrated on the important details.
• _____4. Anita looked for key words and phrases.
• _____5. Sen simplified ideas.
• _____6. Kai revised the main idea.
• _____7. To add more information, Alexa added her
analysis and comments to the ideas of the author.
• _____8. Maria wrote down the general and specific
ideas of the text.
• _____9. Sean added some of his related research to the
information presented in the text.
• _____10. Lalaine extended the message of the text and
included some of her interpretations.
 ACTIVITY

• As a reader, you must also enrich your reading ability

by reading and analyzing various academic texts.
Below is a news article that depicts love amidst
pandemic. Your task is to read and extract the main
idea and supporting details of the news article. Use the
graphic organizer below.
 TECHNIQUES IN SUMMARIZING ACADEMIC
TEXT
• Writing a Summary or a Précis
• A summary or a precis is a synopsis or digest of the essence of
an entire text. Usually, a summary is included in reviews (as in
a review of a book or an academic text) or a literary critique
(as in a summary of a short story or a novel). When
summarizing, make sure that you capture all the major points
of a text, leaving out details which may confuse the readers.
• Summarizing is an important skill because it helps you
• • deepen your understanding of the text;
• • learn to identify relevant information or key ideas;
• • combine details or examples that support the main
idea/s;
• • concentrate on the gist or main idea and key words
presented in the text; and,
• • capture the key ideas in the text and put them together
clearly and concisely.
• What is not summarizing?
You are not summarizing when you:
• write down everything
• write down ideas from text word-for-word;
• write down incoherent and irrelevant ideas;
• write down ideas that are not stated in the text; or
• write down a summary that has the same length or is
longer than the original text
 GUIDELINES IN SUMMARIZING
1. Clarify your purpose before you read.
2. Read the text and understand the meaning. Do not stop reading until you
understand the message conveyed by the author. Locate the gist or main idea of the
text, which can usually be found either at the beginning, in the middle, or in the end.
3. Select and underline or circle the key ideas and phrases while reading; another
strategy is to annotate the text.
4. Write all the key ideas and phrases you identified on the margins or on your
notebook in a bullet or outline form.
5. Without looking at the text, identify the connections of these key ideas and phrases
using a concept map.
6. List your ideas in sentence form in a concept map.
7. Combine the sentences into a paragraph. Use appropriate transitional devices to
improve cohesion.
8. Ensure that you do not copy a single sentence from the original text.
9. Refrain from adding comments about the text. Stick to the ideas it presents.
10. Edit the draft of your summary by eliminating redundant ideas.
11. Compare your output with the original text to ensure accuracy.
12. Record the details of the original source (author’s name/s, date of publication, title,
publisher, place of publishing, and URL [if online]). It is not necessary to indicate the
page number/s of the original text in citing sources in summaries.
13. Format your summary properly. When you combine your summaries in a paragraph,
use different formats to show variety in writing.
 FORMATS IN SUMMARIZING

1. Idea Heading Format

In this format, the summarized idea comes before the citation.
Example:
• Benchmarking is a useful strategy that has the potential to help public
officials improve the performance of local services (Folz, 2004;
Ammons, 2001). Once the practice of a particular city is benchmarked,
it can be a guidepost and the basis for the other counterparts to improve
its own.
 2. AUTHOR HEADING FORMAT
In this format, the summarized idea comes after the citation. The
author’s name/s is/are connected by an appropriate reporting verb.
Example:
• The considerable number of users of FB has led educators to utilize
FB for communicating with their students (Grant, 2008; as cited in
Donmus, 2010). The study of Kabilan, Ahmad, and Abidin (2010)
shows that the students perceived FB as an online environment to
expedite language learning specifically English.
 3. DATE HEADING FORMAT
In this format, the summarized idea comes after the date when the
material was published.
Example:
• On the other hand, active participation of the citizens in development
contributes to a sound and reasonable government decisions. In their
2004 study on the impact of participatory development approach, Irvin
and Stansbury argue that participation can be valuable to the
participation and the government in terms of the process and outcomes of
decision making.
 USING REPORTING VERBS WHEN
SUMMARIZING

• A reporting verb is a word use to discuss another

person’s writings or assertions. They are generally used
to incorporate the source to the discussion in the text.
To illustrate, see the sample text below. The reporting
verbs are italicized.
Example:
• Having a syntactically correct sentence is not enough
to create meaning. As Noam Chomsky pointed out, a
sentence can be perfect in terms of syntax and still not
make sense. He showed this by
• Good job! Your now halfway through in becoming a good
academic reader. At this point, you will encounter an
excerpt from an autobiography of an anonymous writer
and its summary. Read it several times to get an accurate
understanding of it. Using your prior knowledge in
summarizing, analyze the summarized version of the
excerpt then, answer the questions below.
• Questions:
• 1. In the original text, how did the author present his topic in the introductory part?
2. What principle of organization did the author employ in the original text?
3. What could be the reason why certain details were presented?
4. What is the dominant mood or emotion portrayed in the text? How does this help in
conveying the intended message?
5. In the summary of the text, what summarizing format is being utilized?
6. What are the reporting verbs used in the summary?
7. Does the summary cover the relevant points of the original
text? Why or why not?
8. What techniques or guidelines of summarizing are evident in
the summary?
9. How does the summary reflect the message of the original text?
10. What are your observations on the given summary of the
original text?