Teach how to write a summary
Reading, writing, studying require it

Knowing how to write a summary is essential if students are going to be

• Active listeners.

• Good readers.

• Responsible researchers.

• Efficient writers.

Unfortunately, students won’t learn how to summarize without your help — and lots of it.

I suggest you begin by using short pieces of expository writing developed on the persuasive (thesis and support) pattern. If possible, use the students’ own textbooks.

Later, when students have learned how to summarize persuasive-pattern materials, you can teach them how to condense narrative non-fiction, which is more idiosyncratic, to a brief summary.

What teaching summarizing entails

Teaching students how to write a summary involves showing them how to do three tasks:

1. Identify keywords.

2. Find the thesis statement.

3. Find the supporting points.

Let's look at what each task entails.

Identify keywords

The first step in summarizing is to find keywords. Alert students to listen and look for keywords. Keywords are meaningful repeated words. (Words like a and the are repeated, but they are not meaningful.)

Keywords are often replaced by

• Synonyms.

• Pronouns.

• Other forms of the keyword.

For example, in an article about how to choose a dog, the writer might substitute furry friend or canine companion for dog, and use words like pick, select, buy, or make a choice instead of choose.

Keywords usually appear in important places, such as

• The title.

• Opening sentence.

• Thesis statement.

• Section headings of a written work.

In addition, keywords are sprinkled throughout the body of the piece.

Find the thesis statement

The second step in summarizing is to identify the relationship between the key words. Which key word is the topic? Which keywords make an assertion about the topic?

The topic and assertion make up the author’s thesis statement. Everything else in the presentation will be about that central idea.

If you teach students no more about how to write a summary than how to find the thesis of a piece of persuasive-pattern writing, they will be far more skilled than most first-year college students.

Find the supporting points

Informative or persuasive speeches and essays built on the persuasive pattern are likely to have three main points supporting the thesis. There may be from two to five, but three is the norm.

Each of the main points will include one or more keywords from the thesis. Each main point will be the topic sentence of at least one body paragraph.

Students have to go through each body paragraph using keywords, transitional words, and text devices like headlines to find the point (topic sentence) of each paragraph.

Most of students’ required expository reading can be paraphrased in three to six sentences — one sentence to summarize the thesis and one sentence for each of the supporting points.

You don’t need to have a unit, worksheets, or exercises on summarizing skills. You can teach students how to write a summary this way as you are teaching reading comprehension techniques. You’ll get better results with less effort.