67 Summarizing a Text

When you finish reading a text, it’s a great idea to stop for a moment and write a summary of what you just read.

A good summary accomplishes the following:

• It identifies or names the piece and its author(s) and states the main purpose of the text.
  Example: In his essay, “Consider the Lobster,” writer David Foster Wallace asks readers to consider the ethical implications of feasting on lobsters. (You can find a copy of this essay online at gourmet.com.)
• It captures the text’s main points.
• It does not include the reader’s opinions, feelings, beliefs, counterarguments, etc.
• It is short. The idea of a summary is to “boil down” or condense a text to just a few sentences.

Most important of all, when you create a summary of a text, it helps you review what you read and helps your brain capture the main ideas. Writing these down solidifies the memories; this will help you recall them more easily later on.

Check Your Understanding: Summarizing a Text

Read “Replace Annual Physicals with Real-Time Biomarker Monitoring.” (This article by Alex Berezow and Eric Tan can be found online at the Scientific American blog site.)

Write a summary of this text, using the above guidelines.