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Academic Writing: Lecturer: Drs. H. M. Syafi'i S, M.PD

The document discusses summarizing academic texts. It defines a summary as a brief restatement of the key points of a longer piece of work in the writer's own words. The document provides suggestions for writing a successful summary, such as reading the entire text, underlining key points, condensing information, and revising. It also notes that a good summary includes the main ideas, supporting details, author, and source. Summarizing improves writing and comprehension by requiring the reprocessing of information in a condensed form.

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Khofifa Harahap
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33 views

Academic Writing: Lecturer: Drs. H. M. Syafi'i S, M.PD

The document discusses summarizing academic texts. It defines a summary as a brief restatement of the key points of a longer piece of work in the writer's own words. The document provides suggestions for writing a successful summary, such as reading the entire text, underlining key points, condensing information, and revising. It also notes that a good summary includes the main ideas, supporting details, author, and source. Summarizing improves writing and comprehension by requiring the reprocessing of information in a condensed form.

Uploaded by

Khofifa Harahap
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ACADEMIC WRITING

LECTURER :
Drs. H. M. Syafi’i S, M.Pd

SUMMARIZING

INDIVIDUAL SUMMARY BY :

KHOFIFAH HARAHAP (11810420906)

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND TEACHER TRAINING

UNIVERSITY ISLAMIC OF SULTAN SYARIF KASIM RIAU

PEKANBARU
2020
Introduction

A summary, also known as an abstract present the main ideas and the most important
supporting details of a longer piece of work in a very brief form. According to one research
conducted by Graham and Perin (2007) after writing strategy instruction, summarization
instruction has shown a great effect in improving writing. Summarizing is a skill that enhances
students’ writing and comprehension because it requires reprocessing information in a written
text or heard in a listening task and requires expressing that information in their own words to
reconstruct the meaning in a condensed form.

Body

Summarizing

A summary is a statement of the main idea of a longer portion of a work. Like a


paraphrase, a summary should restate the author’s idea in your own words. Unlike a paraphrase,
a summary does not need to capture the details of the paragraphs or section of the work that you
summarizing. Therefore, a paragraph summary may be just a sentence or two, and a summary of
a chapter may be just a paragraph or two.

Suggestions for Successful and Effective Summary

McWhorter (1992) defines “summary” as a compact restatement of the key points of a


passage. You may think of it as a shortened version of a longer message. Unlike a paraphrase, a
summary does not include all information presented in the original text, instead, you have to
select what to include. A summary contains only the core points of the original text, with limited
background, explanation, or detail. Although all summaries vary in length, they are often one-
quarter or less of the length of the original source text. Summarizing is very useful in a variety of
writing assignments in a condensed overview of the material needed. You might summarize
information in a preparation for an essay exam, or key points of news articles required in an
economics class. Because some class assignments also require summarization. Lab reports for
science course, for example, include a summary of results. A literature instructor for example,
may ask you to summarize the plot of the short story. To have a successful and an effective
summary, you are suggested to follow the following steps a guide in writing a summary.
1. Read the entire original source first. Do not write anything until you have understood it
completely and have a complete picture of the work
2. Reread and underline the key points of the source you are reading. Look in particular for
topic sentences of your paragraphs and its essential details.
3. Review the key points you are underlining during reading session. Cross out all but key
phrases. Eliminate repetitions information. Because it will make your summary seem
redundant and prolix.
4. Write sentences to include all remaining underlined information. Condense and combine
the information you have scanned wherever possible.
5. Present ideas in the summary in the same order in which they appeared in the original
source, unless you are purposely regrouping the ideas.
6. Revise your summary. Try to make your summary more concise by diminishing or
eliminating the repetition and combining ideas.

A good summary includes the following:

1. Author, title and source of the original piece of writing


2. The main ideas or thesis of the original text in the own words
3. The most important supporting ideas or points of the original written work

A summary has two aims

1. To reproduce the overarching ideas in a text, identifying the general concepts that run
through the entire piece
2. To express these overarching ideas using precise, specific language.

According to the basic summarizing rules suggested by Brown and Day (1983), 8 types
of summarizing strategies were identified by Idris et al (2008). These strategies are topic
sentence selection, deletion, sentence combination, paraphrase, generalization, syntactic
transformation, sentence reordering and invention

Example:

Summarize the following passages in a sentence or two


Migraine researchers have recently confirmed what many migraineurs, or migraine suffferers,
have known all along: whether can affect migraines. Specifically, falling barometric pressure can
trigger a migraine in many people. People who possess what one sufferer terms a “weather head”
often feel symptoms as a thunderstorm rolls in and the barometric pressure begins to fall. “I
should have been a weather forecaster,” Jokes onen long-time migraine sufferer. “I always know
when a storm is coming.”

Migraine researchers have confirmed falling barometric pressure can trigger a migraine.

Conclusion

Through practicing summarizing strategies, the students become more aware of the
process underlying the written text and they learn how to support the main idea when writing. A
summary is a statement of the main idea of a longer portion of a work. The summary reports on
the author’s point of view.

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