To verify if you went through all the stages necessary in order to write a good summary.
The table below shows you the activities that you had to perform:
| Read, Understand, Focus |
| Read the text - Read and understand the text carefully, and ask yourself questions about this text |
| Use prior knowledge - Use what you already know in order to identify the main ideas in text |
| Make connections - Between ideas in text, text to the world and text to other texts |
| Focus - Focus on main ideas if expositive text or story elements if narrative text |
| Analyse, Identify ideas, Select |
| Analyse text - Combine personal knowledge with clues from text, find out the main points of interest |
| Identify - Make judgements about the text with aim to identify the main ideas in text |
| State the topic sentences - determine the author’s purposes and conclusions |
| Select ideas - Combine and apply recursively the above strategies to select the main ideas in text |
| Restructure and Note |
| Simplify text - Underline the main idea and cross out redundant, detailed, or subidiary information. |
| Change the structure - Change structure of text with the aim to express ideas in your own way |
| Note the main ideas of the text in complete sentences, establish connections between sentences |
| Organise, Write, Revise |
| Combine and organise your notes into continuous writing |
| Revise the summary: make sure you kept the original meanings, your language is correct and your transcript is clear. |
| Note the author conclusions and organise and reformulate your notes |
| Revise the summary - make sure you kept the original meanings, your language is correct and your transcript is clear. |
Remember that writing a summary requires:
The knowledge of the text, obtained through repeated readings.
Identification and formulation of the main ideas using short sentences.
Rephrasing the main ideas into longer sentences.
Adding some selected significant details from the secondary ideas.
Clearly specifying the actors involved in the action described.
Accurately follow the chronological sequence of the actions reported.
Using the present tense and the past tense.
Eliminating the descriptive passages.
Avoiding repetitions, and the use of archaism and local expressions.
Using the second person in the narrative.
Switching from direct to indirect speech without inserting dialogue.
Using objective narration, avoiding personal comments.
Using transition words for and increased fluency of the narration:
then, later, meanwhile, therefore, nevertheless, etc.
Carefully obeying the grammatical, orthographical and punctuation rules.
Paying attention to the final page layout.
