Writing a one-page Summary



Writing a one-page Summary

Some assignments will ask you to write a one-page summary of that evening’s reading.

Being able to write a summary of a longer document or set of materials is a real-world skill, which every educated person needs to develop. If you become a scholar in the world of academics, you will be asked to develop an “Abstract” of any article you write for publication. Typically the abstract is a few paragraphs long and contains only the main points of your longer essay; and it appears immediately before your article in a scholarly journal. If you join the business world, you will find yourself writing “Executive summaries” of long reports for the General Manager or President of your company. In either case, the ability to read through large amounts of material, pull out the main ideas, and organize them into a package that transmits the content of the original work with integrity is a sought-after skill. You’ll get practice doing that in this course.

Here are the steps:

1. Read the article (chapter from Land of the Firebird).

2. Sift through the mass of ideas to find the two-three main points.

3. Organize your summary this way:

a. Introductory paragraph. Here you give the reader a general idea of the material to be covered. A dull, but often-used, way is to include your main points by name in the introduction. But there are better ways to lead into your summary. One is to pose a question.

b. Paragraph for each main point. Ideally you will include a transition at the end of each paragraph to the next.

c. One final paragraph to conclude your summary. Often a final paragraph places the summary’s information into some helpful context – historical, political, etc.

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In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

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