Summarizing a written text

Writing practice: Summarizing a written text

You must click Submit after each text box on the page to record your work in your instructor's gradebook (if your instructor has assigned this activity). After you have clicked Submit, you may review your work (but you may not revise it) by returning to this page at any time.

Review the following guidelines for writing a summary.

  • Start with the title of the text, the name of the author, and the author’s thesis.
  • Maintain a neutral tone; be objective. Limit yourself to presenting the text’s key points.
  • Use the third-person point of view and present tense to state the author's ideas: Taylor argues. . . .
  • Focus on the text. Don’t state the author’s ideas as if they are your own.
  • Put all or most of your summary in your own words; if you borrow a phrase or a sentence from the text, put it in quotation marks and give the page number in parentheses.

Now write a one-paragraph summary of an assigned text.

Question

Now write a one-paragraph summary of an assigned text.

Then reduce your one-paragraph summary to one sentence. What do you learn from the process of writing these summaries? Record your ideas in the space below.

Question

Then reduce your one-paragraph summary to one sentence. What do you learn from the process of writing these summaries? Record your ideas in the space below.