Effective and Ineffective Summaries

An effective summary clearly expresses the main idea of the passage. Determine the main idea and read actively by making predictions, making connections, asking questions, and annotating. Effective summaries should accurately reflect the original work and fairly represent the author’s main idea. Finally, summaries should be brief and should focus only on the main points, without unnecessary details.

Here is an example of an original passage, followed by an ineffective summary and an effective summary of the passage.

Original Passage

There are many misconceptions about the life cycle and migration of monarch butterflies. The most important of these concerns the role of milkweed, plants of the genus Asclepias with unusually shaped, bright-colored flowers. Many people believe that the monarchs depend on milkweeds throughout their life cycle and that these are the only plants that can provide nectar to adult butterflies. However, adult butterflies can drink nectar from many different flowering plants. It is the monarch caterpillars that eat milkweed and only milkweed; therefore, we must make sure that milkweed does not disappear from our fields and roadsides (so that monarchs do not disappear as well).

Ineffective Summary

Although some ignorant people believe otherwise, adult monarch butterflies can in fact drink nectar from many different flowering plants. Monarch caterpillars, on the other hand, eat milkweed and only milkweed, so people need to preserve the milkweed plant.

Effective Summary

Despite conventional wisdom, adult monarch butterflies do not rely exclusively on milkweed flowers for food. However, milkweed really is the only food source for monarch caterpillars. To ensure the caterpillars' survival, people should preserve the milkweed plant.

Consider the ineffective summary above. It has several problems. First, the phrase "some ignorant people believe otherwise" is a negative value judgment that does not exist in the original source. This type of interpretation does not accurately reflect the original author's ideas, so it should be avoided when writing a summary. Secondly, the summary plagiarizes some language without enclosing it in quotation marks: "adult monarch butterflies [. . .] can drink nectar from many different flowering plants" and "monarch caterpillars [. . .] eat milkweed and only milkweed."

The effective summary does not have these problems. It uses original language and presents the original author's ideas fairly, accurately, and objectively.