Summarizing is a key research skill.
Summarizing without plagiarizing: R2-c
Putting summaries and paraphrases in your own words: MLA-2d, APA-2d, and CMS-2d
Your goal in summarizing a text is to state the work’s main ideas and key points simply, objectively, and accurately in your own words. Writing a summary does not require you to judge the author’s ideas; it requires you to understand the author’s ideas. Whereas in an outline you X-ray a text to see its major parts, in a summary you flesh out the parts to demonstrate your understanding of what a text says. If you have sketched a brief outline of the text (see A1-b), refer to it as you draft your summary.
Following is Emilia Sanchez’s summary of the article that is printed in A1-a.
In her essay “Big Box Stores Are Bad for Main Street,” Betsy Taylor argues that chain stores harm communities by taking the life out of downtown shopping districts. Explaining that a community’s “soul” is more important than low prices or consumer convenience, she argues that small businesses are better than stores like Home Depot and Target because they emphasize personal interactions and don’t place demands on a community’s resources. Taylor asserts that big-box stores are successful because “we’ve become a nation of hyper-consumers” (1011), although the convenience of shopping in these stores comes at the expense of benefits to the community. She concludes by suggesting that it’s not “anti-American” to oppose big-box stores because the damage they inflict on downtown shopping districts extends to America itself.
—Emilia Sanchez, student
For many college assignments, you will be asked to read online sources. Research has shown that readers tend to skim online texts rather than read them carefully. On the Web, it is easy to become distracted. And when you skim a text, you are less likely to remember what you have read and less inclined to reread to grasp layers of meaning.
The following strategies will help you read critically online.
Read slowly. Focus and concentration are the goals of all reading, but online readers need to work against the tendency to skim. Instead of sweeping your eyes across the page, consciously slow down the pace of your reading to focus on each sentence.
Avoid multitasking. Close other applications, especially e-mail and social media. If you follow a link for background or the definition of a term, return to the text immediately.
Annotate electronically. You can take notes and record questions on electronic texts. In a print-formatted electronic document (such as a PDF version of an article), you can use the highlighting features in your PDF reader. You might also use electronic sticky notes or the comment feature in your word processing program.
Print the text. You may want to save a text to a hard drive, USB drive, or network and then print it (making sure to record information about the source for proper citation later). Once you print it, you can easily annotate it.