Anglès:

Summary

The following stages may be useful when writing a summary:

Identify the purpose of the summary:

Is it for your notes, for a critical review, to include as evidence supporting your understanding of a topic?

Read the original carefully. Check the meanings of words you are unfamiliar with. Read the text at least twice or until you are certain you understand it.

Select the important idea/s and information by highlighting the original or taking separate notes. Note the keywords and topic sentences. Select important definitions of keywords that you may need to include.

Select the main claim/thesis of the text to be summarised. Even if this is not explicitly expressed, try to write your own understanding of the author's claim.

Gather groups of details, examples and minor ideas under more general terms, a phrase or single word.

Do not include repeated ideas/information from the original.

After writing a summary check that the meaning and attitude of the original text is unaltered. Do not add your own views to it. These can follow later.

Always keep accurate bibliographical details for in-text references / footnotes and your Reference list.

Exercise:

Write a summary for the following text:

Original text:

The evaluative connotations of words are of considerable importance as you develop an argument or put forth an interpretation of some facts. Just a few are enough to signal your perspective in an otherwise neutral presentation of data. By introducing someone's proposition with the work "claim" or "assert", you imply a real possibility of challenging it and invite the reader to reserve judgement about it, if not to view it sceptically. (such words are unfortunate if you really mean to endorse the proposition.) But appropriately used they prepare the reader for your counter arguments long before you get to them. By describing a set of predictions in passing as either "optimistic" or "gloomy", you can very simply indicate both your criticism of them and the direction in which you think they err. The connotations of words can provide an interim commentary in a discussion before you communicate the ultimate evaluation or argument. (Peters, 1985).

Source: Peters, P. (1985). Strategies for student writers: A guide to writing essays, tutorial papers, exam papers and reports. Queensland: John Wiley & Sons. p. 88