LESSON 1

WHAT IS A SUMMARY?
 1. What parts of the text
should be included in the
ESSENTIAL summary?
QUESTIONS 2. What are we looking for
when we scan a paper
instead of reading it closely?

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 PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

5 Summarizing a text is distilling its

essential concepts in a paragraph or two.
Typically, a summary has two goals:
1. to reproduce the key ideas and points
of a text, and
2. to express these concepts and ideas
with precise and specific language.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

You must be ready to choose which parts of

the text to include and which parts to
exclude in your summary.

When reading a text, there are two

techniques you can use in order to prepare:
1. previewing
2. skimming and scanning
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WHEN SELECTING WHICH PARTS TO INCLUDE IN
YOUR SUMMARY, TAKE NOTE OF:
1. YOUR PURPOSE FOR SUMMARIZING THE TEXT
2. YOUR OWN VIEW ON WHAT IS ESSENTIAL IN
THE TEXT

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

● Set your goals in reading any academic

text early on, especially when you plan to
summarize it later on for research or
study purposes. 4. This will allow you to
be more focused and to pay more
attention to the parts of the text that are
important for your purposes.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

● Before you read a text in earnest, try the

previewing technique first to better orient
yourself to what you need from the text
you are about to dive into.

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY
Steps you can follow for previewing:
1. Don’t skip the title! It is usually written
to orient the reader and provide a hint as
to what the central concepts of the text
will be.
2. Consider the subject matter: Have you
read about this topic before? What prior
information about it do you already have,
or what can you guess? 8
PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY
3.Who is the author of the text? Is additional
information about the author available in any
part of the text? What do you already know
about him or her?
4.Where was this text originally published?
Who might be the audience for this kind of
text? What could the audience expect to find
in the text?
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

5.When was this text originally published? Is

there a connection between the time period
it was written in and the field of study it was
published in? Were there any important
events or significant trends during the time
the text was written or published?

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

6. What seems to be the general progression of

ideas in the chapter titles or headings that
section the article?
7. Why has your teacher assigned this text?
Where does it fit into the course or subject as a
whole? What sort of facts and ideas are you
expected to remember from this reading?
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WHEN READING AN ACADEMIC TEXT, CAREFULLY
READ ITS ABSTRACT AND DISCUSSION, AND
EXAMINE ITS GRAPHS, IF ANY.

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY
5. Skimming and Scanning
● By first skimming through a text, you
can get an idea of its overall logical
progression.
● Skimming can also help you determine
which parts of the text need your utmost
attention to achieve your purposes for
reading the text.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

● Listed in the next slides are steps you can

take when skimming, but they can be
modified or adjusted to your comfort.

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

1. Before skimming, make use of the

previewing techniques from the previous
subsection.
2. Then, carefully read the introductory
paragraph. Try to predict the direction of
the coming explanations, arguments, and
examples.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

3. Carefully read the first one or two sentences

of each paragraph, as well as the concluding
sentence or sentences.
4. In between the opening and closing sentences,
keep your eyes moving. Your goal is to take in
the overarching concepts and overall picture or
pattern of the text.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

5. Carefully read the concluding

paragraph or paragraphs. What might
the author’s overall purpose be? Keep in
mind that you may be mistaken, so be
ready and willing to modify your answer if
needed.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

6. Finally, return to the beginning and do a

more focused reading of the text. Be
more mindful of what you might have
missed in your skimming and try to
understand them thoroughly.

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

● Skimming is effective in getting a quick grasp

of what the paper is about without reading
through it carefully.
● Each paragraph in a paper has its own main
ideas, usually as its first or last sentence.
● You can start connecting the dots and guess
how the paper would defend its thesis.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

Example
In the next slide is the title of an academic
paper followed by the introductory
sentences of the first couple of paragraphs.

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

Title: Muling Mag-abang sa Kundiman:

Revisiting Edgar Samar’s Poetry

In recent years, many students, and even

quite a number of adults and parents, have
come to know the name of Edgar Samar.

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

However, it is a lesser-known fact that

Edgar Samar has been very prolific in the
Philippine literary scene since as early as
2002.

For 13 years, Edgar Samar has been a

successful fictionist and poet.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY
In recent years, asking who Edgar Samar is
in the Philippines would, more often than
not, result in people being familiar with the
name.

To delve more into the poetic works of

Edgar Samar, two of his poems will be
presented in this paper.
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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

These are what you would read while still

skimming the paper before reading it more
closely. What might the topic of the paper
be, judging from your skimming?

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PREPARING TO WRITE A SUMMARY

4. Scanning is similar to skimming, except

you should have a more focused purpose.
5.You are now skimming to find a particular
fact or figure or to see if the text mentions
a specific subject you are researching.

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 WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?
● An effective summary should be able to
condense a passage into a shorter form
because it only communicates the essential
facts of the original text.
● You are rewriting the text to be more focused
on the main points for easier reference later
on.
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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

● Effective summarizing is important for

both research and writing because it can
allow you to return to pertinent
information much faster.
● In the next slides is a list of what is and
what is not included in a summary.

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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

1. Include the title and the name of the

author in your first sentence.
2. The first few sentences of your summary
should contain the author’s thesis so it is
easier to recall what the key points of the
text are.
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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

3. Often, longer articles are divided into

subsections to organize information.
Make sure to maintain the subsections
and keep information with similar ideas
close together.

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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?
4. Omit minor details and ideas that are not
central to the text. However, be careful in
omitting too much and warping the author’s
original intention.
5. In general, omit specific examples unless they
are integral to the author’s argument. If the
purpose of the example is to provide
clarification, then it can be omitted.
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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

6.Avoid opinions or personal responses in

your summaries. A summary should only
contain the author’s ideas.
7. Try writing the first draft of your summary
without looking back at the text as you
write to avoid plagiarism.
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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

Example
In his paper “Global Implications of Patent Law
Variation,” Koji Suzuki (1991) says that the world’s
patent laws have a lot of inconsistencies, and that this
can be a severe problem. In the majority of countries
in the world, the first to file for a patent is given the
patent ownership.

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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

Explanation
● In this summary, the author and the title
of the text are already present in the first
sentence.
● The thesis is also immediately given,
providing a clear guide on how the rest of
the summary can be written.
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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

However, in the United States, patent ownership is

given to the inventor directly. In light of this, the
patent ownership can change depending on the
country. While the existence of multiple possible
patent ownerships can cause economic problems, the
international tension that it creates is a bigger
problem.

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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

The United States violates the Paris Convention on

Industrial Properties by not recognizing patent
ownership in other countries and has prompted the
World Intellectual Properties Organization (WIPO) to
ask the United States to review its existing patent law
principles.

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WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A SUMMARY?

Explanation
● It provides an overview of what else the
original text might be talking about.
● The summary then talks about the
important details in the text, excluding
any additional examples and personal
opinions.
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Find an academic paper or text that you
have previously discussed in a different
class, or find one that you have read before.
Then, write a short summary for it in no less
than 250 words.

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 QUESTIONS

1. What are the goals of a summary?

2. What should you read first when
skimming and why?

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QUESTION

When is scanning best used while preparing

to write a summary?

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A summary is a shorter and more
condensed form of a text, and this is a
good practice to follow when conducting
research or studying.

The goals of a summary are to reproduce

the key ideas of a text and to express them
with precise and specific language.
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A proper summary can be used to help you
return to pertinent information you might
need for your academic writing.

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