For many college students, summary writing is the hardest skill to acquire. Teachers and course instructors can facilitate the teaching of this important skill by working through a problem or piece of material that illustrates course content using several summary strategies.
Summary Strategies
Using summary strategies is a good way to teach summarization. Encourage students to read in stages. This will allow them to process the information gradually rather than all at once. For most students, it helps to have an interest, background knowledge and connection to the topic before they actually write their summary.
First reading stage: Usually the title and the synopsis can give a good idea of what the article or essay is about. The thesis gives an indication of the argument. Students can also use any non-verbal information to provide any clues.
Students read for overall impression, size the information in their minds and ask themselves what they already know about the topic. As they read, have them consider the following questions: What is the essay or article's significance as a whole and its stages of thought. What does it say? How is it organized? How does each part of the passage fit into the whole? What do all the points add up to?
Second reading stage: have students reread the text and underline key points and make marginal notations. Encourage students to pace themselves while reading.
After students synthesize the information, encourage them to break away from the language and write one to sentence summary of each paragraph. While summarizing, students should ask themselves: "What is the author's view? Does s/he make a statement that pulls all this together?
Understanding the Main Idea
Effective summary writing depends on how students can synthesize information in chunks. To do this successfully, teachers can use the following points:
- Have students determine the main points that compose the paragraph.
- Have students note key examples.
- Have students grasp the central idea and the shape of the argument.
Teachers can also bring to students' awareness that different types of writing requires different approaches of reading and in doing so, students can adapt their reading accordingly.
Final stage of summarizing writing: Students read over their summaries and see if they have written makes sense in terms of the bigger (main ideas and concepts) and smaller (smaller concepts/details) picture.
Learning how to summarize an article is largely a process of trial and error.But with summary strategies and reading skills, students can produce a summary that is true to the text and still contains their own ideas and thoughts.
Dorit Sasson - Hello! I'm an ESL instructor, teacher diversity coach and writer for the educational markets who writes on English language learners ...
