English for Academic and

Professional Purposes
Quarter 1, Module 3
Use Various Techniques in Summarizing a
Variety of Academic Texts
Lesson Objectives:

At the end of the lesson, the learner

should be able
1. Use Various Techniques in
Summarizing a Variety of Academic
Texts
(CS_EN11/12A-EAPP-Iac-4)
Pretest

Please go to our Google Classroom and

click the Classwork and Answer the
Pretest.
 Learning Concept:
• Summarizing a text is a vital skill for your English academic reading
and writing.
• As you progress in this course, you will be required to read various
types of academic and professional papers. One of the ways for you to
test whether you fully understood what you have read is if you can
make a short, clear summary of the main ideas of the text. If you cannot
do this, then you almost certainly haven’t understood it fully.
• Understanding what you read is not just about the words. Rather, it is
about understanding the ideas, how these ideas are organized, and
which ideas are more or less important.
• But, before you learn some strategies in summarizing, you need to learn
first the basic concepts about summarizing
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.
• 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.
 What is a summary?

• As you encounter longer articles and even researches, the need for you
to digest and focus on essential ideas increases.
• Summarizing now in your level is often used to determine essential
ideas in a book article, book chapter, an article or parts of an article.
• These essential ideas include the gist or main idea, useful information,
or key words or phrases that help you meet your reading purpose.
• For example, instead of reading an entire research paper to get the
important points, you can just view the abstract of the paper which is
also its summary. It lessens time and effort.
 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?
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
Now that you have already learned some techniques on how to better
understand what you are reading, here are some general guidelines in
summarizing as suggested by Barrot and Sipacio (2017):
1. Clarify your purpose before you read.
2. 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.
5. Without looking at the text, identify the connections of these key ideas
and phrases using a concept map.
General Guidelines in Summarizing
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.
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.
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.
Writing a summary also depends on certain disciplines and each discipline
would require specific guidelines. Academic writing would require you to
adhere to these guidelines and structures retrieved from University of New
South Wales
(htttp://student.unsw.edu.au/paraphrasing-summarizing-and-quoting) as
cited in Barrot & Sipacio. (2017)
● Publishing companies, libraries, or movie catalogue—do not give away
the actual content of the material in writing the summaries—it simply
piques the interest of the target audience. (Descriptive Abstracts)
● Research papers—readily present the key ideas and major findings of
the study. (Summative Abstracts)
Structure of an Abstract, a Precis, or Summary
Research Abstract
✔ Usually contains 150 to 300 words;
✔ It does not use any citation;
✔ It does not include specific result statistics;
✔ Last to be written.

Research Abstract Structure:

● Rationale (around 20%)
● Research problems (around 10%)
● Methodology (around 20%)
● Major findings (around 40%)
● Conclusion and implications (around 10%)
Sample Research Abstract
Summary of Expository Texts
✔ Condenses information into 15 to 30% of the original text;
✔ It is achieved by getting the thesis statement of the text and the main idea
or topic sentence of each paragraph;
✔ Main ideas are combined into a paragraph using cohesive devices;
✔ Name of the author and the title of the article are indicated in the first
sentence.
Sample Non-Research Academic Text
Sample Non-Research Academic Text
Sample Non-Research Academic Text
Formats in Summarizing
The three formats that you may use in writing summaries are the following:
1. Idea Heading Format
In this format, the summarized idea comes before the citation.
Example:
Formats in Summarizing
2. Author Heading Format
In this format, the summarized idea comes after the citation. The author’s
name/s is/are connected by an appropriate reporting verb.
Example:
Formats in Summarizing
3. Date Heading Format
In this format, the summarized idea comes after the date when the material
was published.
Example:
Using Reporting Verbs when Summarizing
A reporting verb is a word used to discuss another person’s writings or
assertions. They are generally used to incorporate the source to the discussion
in the text. To illustrate, see the sample text below. Reporting verbs are
italicized
Using Reporting Verbs when Summarizing
To make your summary more interesting and to show importance to each of
your sources, you should vary the verbs you use. You can use the past or the
present tense of the verb depending on your meaning.
⮚ Use the past tense if you think the idea is outdated and you want to negate
it.
⮚ The use of the present tense, on the other hand, indicates that you view the
idea to be relevant or agreeable.
⮚ Reporting verbs are used according to discipline. Hyland (1999) lists a
frequency of reporting verbs according to discipline
Using Reporting Verbs when Summarizing
Practice Task

Please go to our Google Classroom and

click the Classwork,
Answer the Practice 1 - 3