Lesson 3:

VARIOUS TECHNIQUES
IN SUMMARIZING A
VARIETY OF ACADEMIC
TEXTS
Objective:

Use various techniques

in summarizing a variety
of academic texts
 The noblest deeds that have been done on earth have not
been done for gold. It was not for the sake of gold that Lord
Jesus came down and died on the cross. The Spartans looked
for no reward where they fought and died at Thermopylae.
Socrates the wise, asked for no pay from his countrymen but
lived poor and barefooted all his days, only caring to make
them good and noble. And there are heroes even in our own
days also who do noble deeds but not for gold.
Our discoverers did not go to make themselves rich when
they sailed out one after another into the dreary frozen seas:
nor did the ladies who went out to drudge in hospitals of the
East make themselves poor that they might be rich in noble
work. (136 words)
Title – Money should not be the goal
of life
It is not for money that the
noblest deeds have been done by
great men. Jesus, Socrates, the
Spartans, the explorers, and the
nurses in hospitals served mankind
purely for the sake of service. (34
words)
Q: What strategies did you
employ in order to retell the
story?
Q: Did you find these
strategies helpful? Why or
why not?
What is Summarizing?
 As an important skill in critical
reading, summarizing is often used to
determine the essential ideas in a
book, article, book chapter, and
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.
 To summarize is to put in
your own words a shortened
version of written or spoken
materials, stating the main
points and leaving out
everything that is not essential.
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/s;
•Concentrate on the gist or
main idea and key words
presented in the text; and,
•Capture the key ideas in the
text and put them together
clearly and concisely.
Various techniques in
summarizing a variety of
academic texts:
1. Read the work first to
understand the author’s intent.
This is a crucial step because an
incomplete reading could lead
to an inaccurate summary.
2. One of the summarization
techniques you can do is to present
information through facts, skills and
concepts in visual formats. You can
provide the cause and effects charts,
time lines, and Venn diagrams,
templates for outlines, use flow
charts or infographics.
3. To avoid difficulty, you need
first to know the main
points and the supporting
details.
4. You need to analyze the text
to save time in thinking what
you will do.
5. Think what information you will put
in your summary, be sure to cover the
main points and arguments of the
document.
6. One of the best things to do in auto
summarizing is restating the words into
different ones. You should avoid using
the original words of the author; use your
own vocabulary but be sure to retain the
information.
7. You will fully understand what the
document is when you organize all
ideas.
8. One of the things you can do is to
write down all information in a
coherent and precise form. Keep in
mind that a summary is a condensed
version of the original paper, so avoid
making it long.
9. You can also decide to represent
information through using dimensional
constructions in representing concepts,
skills or facts.
10. Paraphrasing is one of the skills
you can do in writing a summary. With
it, do not use the same words with the
author.
 FORMATS IN SUMMARIZING
(with citations)
1. Idea Heading Format
In this format, the
summarized idea comes
before the citation.
Example:
Benchmarking is a useful strategy
that has the potential to help public
officials improve the performance of
local services (Folz, 2004; Ammons,
2001). Once the practice of a particular
city is benchmarked, it can be a
guidepost and the basis for the other
counterparts.
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:
The study of Folz (2004),
shows that benchmarking is a
useful strategy that has the
potential to help public officials
improve the performance of
local services.
3. Date Heading Format
In this format, the
summarized idea comes
after the date when the
material was published.
Example:
In 2004, Folz show that
benchmarking is a useful
strategy that has the potential to
help public officials improve the
performance of local services.
Another way of citation
Example:
According to Mendoza (1990), by
the end of the century, our fuel
reserves will be reduced to half,
and scarcity of energy supplies
will be a big problem.
Another 5 Easy Techniques in
Summarizing Various Academic Texts
Technique 1: Somebody Wanted But
So Then
Technique 2: SAAC Method
Technique 3: 5 W's, 1 H
Technique 4: First, Then, Finally
Technique 5: Give Me the Gist
Technique 1: Somebody Wanted But So Then
“Somebody Wanted But So Then” is an excellent
summarizing strategy for stories. Each word
represents a key question related to the story's
essential elements:
 Somebody: Who is the story about?
 Wanted: What does the main character want?
 But: Identify a problem that the main character
encountered.
 So: How does the main character solve the
problem?
 Then: Tell how the story ends.
Example:
 Somebody: Little Red Riding Hood
 Wanted: She wanted to take cookies to
her sick grandmother.
 But: She encountered a wolf
pretending to be her grandmother.
 So: She ran away, crying for help.
 Then: A woodsman heard her and
saved her from the wolf.
After answering the questions, combine the
answers to form a summary:
Little Red Riding Hood wanted to take
cookies to her sick grandmother, but she
encountered a wolf. He got to her
grandmother’s house first and pretended to
be the old woman. He was going to eat Little
Red Riding Hood, but she realized what he
was doing and ran away, crying for help. A
woodsman heard the girl’s cries and saved
her from the wolf.
Technique 2: SAAC Method
The SAAC method is another useful technique
for summarizing any kind of text (story,
article, speech, etc).
 State: name of the article, book, or story
 Assign: the name of the author
 Action: what the author is doing (example:
tells, explains)
 Complete: complete the sentence or summary
with keywords and important
Here is an example of SAAC in action:
 State: The Boy Who Cried Wolf
 Assign: Aesop (a Greek storyteller)
 Action: tells
 Complete: what happens when a
shepherd boy repeatedly lies to the
villagers about seeing a wolf
Use the four SAAC cues to write out a summary
of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
in complete sentences:

The Boy Who Cried Wolf, by Aesop (a Greek

storyteller), tells what happens when a
shepherd boy repeatedly lies to the villagers
about seeing a wolf. After a while, they
ignore his false cries. Then, when a wolf really
does attack, they don’t come to
help him.
Technique 3: 5 W's, 1 H
The 5 W's, 1 H strategy relies on six crucial
questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how.
These questions make it easy to identify the main
character, the important details, and the main idea.
 Who is the story about?
 What did they do?
 When did the action take place?
 Where did the story happen?
 Why did the main character do what he/she did?
 How did the main character do what he/she did?
Try this technique with a familiar fable such as "The
Tortoise and the Hare."
 Who? The tortoise
 What? He raced a quick, boastful hare and won.
 When? When isn’t specified in this story, so it’s not
important in this case.
 Where? An old country road
 Why? The tortoise was tired of hearing the hare
boast about his speed.
 How? The tortoise kept up his slow but steady pace.
Then, use the answers to the 5 W's and 1 H
to write a summary of in complete
sentences.
Tortoise got tired of listening to Hare
boast about how fast he was, so he
challenged Hare to a race. Even though he
was slower than Hare, Tortoise won by
keeping up his slow and steady pace when
Hare stopped to take a nap.
Technique 4: First, Then, Finally
This technique helps students summarize events
in chronological order. The three words represent
the beginning, main action, and conclusion of a
story, respectively:
 First. What happened first? Include the main
character and main event/action.
 Then. What key details took place during the
event/action?
 Finally. What were the results of the
event/action?
Here is an example using "Goldilocks
and the Three Bears."
First, Goldilocks entered the bears'
home while they were gone. Then, she
ate their food, sat in their chairs, and
slept in their beds. Finally, she woke up
to find the bears watching her, so she
jumped up and ran away.
Technique 5: Give Me the Gist
When someone asks for "the
gist" of a story, they want to
know what the story is about. In
other words, they want a
summary—not a retelling of
every detail.
When summarizing is useful?

Summarizing is useful in many

types of writing and at different points
in the writing process. Summarizing is
used to support an argument, provide
context for a paper’s thesis, write
literature reviews, and annotate a
bibliography.
 The benefit of summarizing lies in
showing the "big picture," which allows the
reader to contextualize what you are saying.
In addition to the advantages of summarizing
for the reader, as a writer you gain a better
sense of where you are going with your
writing, which parts need elaboration, and
whether you have comprehended the
information you have collected.
www.umanitoba.ca/student/academiclearning
PLAGIARISM – is defined as the
copying verbatim of language and
ideas of other writers taking credit
for them.
It is the representation of another
author's language, thoughts, ideas,
or expressions as one's own original
work.
Techniques to
avoid plagiarism of
language:
Summarizing
Paraphrasing
Using quotations
Summarizing - is a short
restatement of the main idea of
a text.
Paraphrasing – is a restatement
in your own words of the main
idea and supporting details of a
text.
Using of Quotations – Aside from
citing work to attribute ownership
of ideas, the language must
observe novelty such that it
expresses the ideas of works
cited, but at the same time,
employs the voice of the author
writing the academic paper.
 Read the passage, then
summarize it in 2-3
sentences.
 We call anything beautiful that gives us pleasure, and that depends
as much upon ourselves as upon what is outside us. Perhaps the
majority of people find the sea beautiful when it is blue. If someone
has lived in Italy as a child and has to live beside the grey northern
seas when he is grown up, he will think that the grey seas are ugly:
and that nothing can be so beautiful as the blue Mediterranean. But
suppose a Scottsman who loves Scottland has to go and live in Italy.
He might find the blue sea after a little while very uninteresting.
Only when he went home and saw the grey sea again would he find
the sea beautiful.
We are made in different ways, and grey may be just as beautiful
as blue, just as the cry of a baby may be found sweeter in someone’s
ears than the finest note of the finest singer that ever lived. Nothing
is beautiful or ugly in itself, but thinking makes it so. (172 words)
¼ sheet of paper

Read the passage. Then,

write your summarized version
with citation. Employ
knowledge learned in this
lesson and use critical thinking.
 Mobile and computer technology
may also affect children’s sociability. The
use of this technology may take away
hours from children’s social and playing
time. Yet from another perspective, it
can help cultivate their communicative
and social skills through using different
social media platforms and sharing apps
with friends. (Subia and Tatel, 2014).
Thank you!