What is Summarising?
Summarising or summarisation means to develop a summary of a text or other resources. It is a text, a video or an article in an abridged form that:
- communicates what is most important for the author of that content,
- is written “in your own words“, and
- states the information “someone need to focus on” when studying that content.
The result of summarisation must be a description of the most important features contained in the original source, in particularly: the central theme, the main points and the key ideas.
Summarising – Why is it important?
Summarising allows comprehension and a concise understanding of the material.
At school, summarising helps you understand the organisational structure of a lesson and integrate the learning of the major points. It enables you to focus on those elements of an assigned text that is worth knowing and remembering.
Summarisation is one of the hardest strategies for students to grasp.
Learning to summarise requires time, models and numerous opportunities to practice.
In today’s work culture it is important to be proficient in the skill of summarisation, it can save time, money and energy. Summarised versions of information are used in almost all professional settings.
Summarising – How to do it?
A large number of summarisation techniques have been developed over time by education professionals. The three main elements common to all the techniques are:
- the selection: discover and retain main ideas from original resource.
- the rejection: remove unnecessary information in the text/resource.
- the substitution: restate sentences in the original text.
The summarisation process can be delivered by graphical or visual tools or by text analysis and condensation software applications.
