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Eapp Lesson 3

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48 views25 pages

Eapp Lesson 3

Uploaded by

jaye gomez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LESSON 3

Goal: Use various techniques in


summarizing a variety of academic
texts.
What is a summary?

 Also known as abstract or prěcis (pray-see), a SUMMARY is


a form of writing that is a product of careful digesting and
relating to a shorter form of any long composition.
What is a summary?
 It is also a form of note-taking that consists of stating briefly,
sometimes in a sentence, sometimes in a paragraph of your own
words, the essential ideas together with some details of the
subject that was discussed at greater length in the original form.

 Summaries aim to precisely condense a larger work to present


only the key ideas. It conveys the gist of what has been read,
listened to, or viewed.
Simply put, to sum up a text is to simplify,
condense, or shorten it into its most important
ideas using your own words.
Why is summarizing a significant critical reading
skill?
 Barrot and Sipacio (2017) argues that summarizing is an important skill because
it helps you

⮚ deepen your understanding of the text;


⮚ learn to identify relevant information or key ideas;
⮚ combine details or examples that support the main idea and key words presented
in the text; and,
⮚ capture the key ideas in the text and put them together clearly and concisely.
What is NOT Summarizing?

 You are NOT summarizing when you

⮚ write down everything;


⮚ write down ideas from the text word-for-word;
⮚ write down incoherent and irrelevant ideas;
⮚ write down ideas that are not stated in the text; or
⮚ write down a summary that has the same length or is longer than the
original
text.
Strategies/ Techniques in Summarizing

 Summarizing a text has so much to do with comprehension. One


cannot summarize unless he/she is able to understand key ideas of
what is being read.

 There are some guidelines in summarizing a text but first, Oxford


Online English suggests some strategies/ techniques to help you
better understand what you read.
1. Finding the Main Idea

 Every coherent text has one central idea, which connects the
different parts of the text. You need to find this main idea
for you to understand and summarize the text. However,
there is not a single way to find the main idea because every
text is different. Instead, you need to look at the whole
thing.
Here are some things you should look at:

 a. Is there a title or headings? These often highlight


important points.
 b. What is the first sentence about? Often, the first sentence
of a text or a paragraph will summarize the main ideas. But
main ideas can also be located in the middle or at the last
sentence of the text.
 c. What does most of the text talk about? Look at each
sentence and paragraph. Is there a single topic that connects
them?
2. Separating General Ideas from
Details/Examples
 To summarize a text, you need to distinguish general ideas
from details or examples. It is important that you do not
confuse the general idea from the details because you
might misunderstand the overall meaning of what you are
reading. Unfortunately, there are no clear markers which
show you what is general or not. A single sentence might
mix general ideas and details together. So, how ere you
going to separate general ideas from details?
a. First, skim the text, reading fast and trying to understand the overall idea in a
simple way. In order to distinguish general ideas from details, you need some
context. Until you’ve read the whole thing, you will not get the text’s context or
background.

b. Second, look for linking phrases like ‘for example’. ‘for instance’, ‘specifically’,
or in ‘particular’. Linking phrases like these show you that what follows is an
explanation of a more general idea that was mentioned before.

c. Third, remember that one sentence can contain both general ideas and details
mixed together.
3. Identifying Key Words
 One of the problems you may often encounter when reading English
texts is that there are words which you do not understand. You
might have several words which you do not know and that makes
things more difficult but there are strategies you can use.
 1. First, look for proper nouns, which start with a capital letter. Sometimes you
might think that you do not understand a word, but you do not realize that it is
actually a proper noun like a person’s name or a place name. Can you look for
proper nouns in the sentence inside the box below?

Guugu Yimithirr is an indigenous Australian language,


spoken in northern
Queensland; the majority of speakers live in the town
of Hopevale.
 Generally, if a proper noun is important or not widely
understood, it will be explained. For example, ‘Guugu
Yimithirr’ is obviously important, and it is explained in the
first part of the sentence. If a proper noun is not explained,
you can usually ignore it, or try to work out the meaning
from the context. For example, even if you have never
heard of Queensland or Hopevale, you can work out that
they’re place names because of the use of the preposition
‘in’.
 2. Next, look for words that tell you that an idea is
important. You could look for words like ‘important’,
‘notable’, ‘significant’ or ‘essential’.

 3. Another strategy in finding key words is looking for


repeated words. If words are often repeated in a text, that
means that word is significant in giving meaning to a text.
So basically, the key to making a good summary is
to first have a grasp of the
essential ideas presented in the text. You cannot
translate into your own words and
shorten something that you do not understand.
General Guidelines in Summarizing

1.Clarify your purpose before you read.


2.Read the text at least twice until you fully understand its
content. Locate the gist or main idea of the text, which can
usually be found either at the beginning, in the middle, or
in the end.
3.Highlight key ideas and phrases; another strategy is to
annotate the text.
4.Write all the key ideas and phrases you identified on the
margins or on your notebook in a bullet or outline form.
General Guidelines in Summarizing

5. Without looking at the text, identify the connections of these key


ideas and phrases using a concept map.
6. List your ideas in sentence form in a concept map.
7. Combine the sentences into a paragraph. Use appropriate
transitional devices to
improve cohesion.
8. Never copy in verbatim a single sentence from the original text.
General Guidelines in Summarizing
9. Refrain from adding comments about the text. Stick
to the ideas it presents.
10.Edit the draft of your summary by eliminating
redundant ideas.
11.Compare your output with the original text to ensure
accuracy.
General Guidelines in Summarizing

12.Record the details of the original source (author’s name/s, date of


publication, title, publisher, place of publishing, and URL, (if online).
It is not necessary to indicate the page number/s of the original text in
citing sources in summaries.

13.Format your summary properly. When you combine your


summaries in a paragraph, use different formats to show variety in
writing.

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