HFCC Learning Lab
Summarizing an Article 7.21
Summarizing an Article or Book Chapter
This handout is intended to serve as a brief guide to the most important qualities of a good
summary. If your teacher has given you specific instructions about the length, layout, organization, or
other features of the summaries you are assigned to turn in, you should follow those directions too.
A. Reading Techniques
1. To write a good summary, you have to understand what you are reading, meaning
that words for which you cannot think if a synonym must be looked up in a
dictionary. That way, the meaning of the sentences the words appear in will be
clearer. Remember that the authors of assigned readings are assuming college-level
literacy in their readers, and that your teachers want you to learn to use good
words.
2. Take some notes as you read, or, if you are reading a Xeroxed copy of an article,
make some “highlighting” marks on it. You are trying to figure out the main point or
points the author is making. For many readings assigned by college teachers, this
task will require some serious thinking and deciding. Again the readings are
intended to be challenging.
3. To document your summary, you will need all of the appropriate publication
information, so be sure to copy it carefully, and arrange and punctuate it exactly as
your teacher has shown you.
B. Writing Techniques
1. Your summary should be written in your own words. Any words, phrases or
sentences you copy directly from assigned readings must be placed in quote
marks (“…”). Copying without using quote marks may result in your teacher
giving you a failing grade, for “plagiarism”, because you would not be
showing your own understandings of the reading assignment.
2. It may take you a while to get the first sentence of your summary exactly
right. Immediately after finishing your reading, put it aside, and just think,
with your pen in hand, ‘What exactly is this reading about?” Write down
your answer. That is a good start.
3. Work on the beginning of your summary, rephrasing what you first wrote,
until it refers to no more and no less than what the reading covers. Your
beginning should not be either too general or too specific.
4. Now look at your summary’s first sentence(s) and find those words that you
should explain further because the reading has made these specific details
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sound important. Cover each of these supporting points from the reading in
your own sentence, using your words.
Remember that most college reading material, no matter the specific
subject, tries to explain WHY certain things happen, so you should try to say
what the author of the reading presents as the causes of the events being
describes. Just ask yourself, “What events needing explaining did the author
see in the world?” And then, “What are the author’s theories about the
causes of these events?” And finally, “What supporting information does
the author provide?”
5. Proofread your completed summary carefully both before you type and
after, checking for mistakes of sentence structure, grammar, word choice,
and spelling-anything that would distract your teacher and keep him/her
from seeing that you understand the material you read.
6. If your teacher has asked you to document your summary, place this
information about your reading at the top of each summary page you turn
in. refer to your teacher’s sample, English textbooks, or Learning Lab
resources for correct content and layout documenting various types of
readings. In documentation, every little detail matters, so go slowly, trying
to get every space and punctuation mark exactly the way it is in the
samples.
Summarizing an Article
The Power of Baby Talk
The number of words a baby hears in the first year of life and the tone in which they spoken
affect fundamental circuits in the human brain, researchers have found. A child’s ability to think
rationally, solve problems and reason abstractly appear to be established in infancy-long before babies
understand what is being said to them.
A study carried out at the University of Iowa illustrates the power of spoken words on brain
development. The researchers, Betty Hart and Todd Risley, visited the homes of 42 families with new
babies for two and a half years, recording for an hour a month, every word spoken. The parent’s tone of
voice, whereas children of working-class parents heard 1,200 words and children of parents on welfare
heard about 600 words per hour.
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As reported in their recent book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American
Children, the researchers found that the children of professional parents heard on average 2,100 words
per hour, whereas children of working-class parents heard 1,200 words and children of parents on
welfare heard about 600 words per hour.
The cumulative effect of this chatter was staggering. After one year, the children of professional
parents had heard 11 million words, whereas the children from working-class homes heard 6 million and
welfare children heard only about 3 million-a varying input that had a profound effect on each child’s
abilities to think conceptually by age 4.
The first three years are unique in the lives of humans because infants are so utterly dependent
on adults for all their nurture and language, Dr. Hart said. By age 4, the best that can be expected from
education or intervention programs is to keep less advantaged children from falling even further behind,
she said.
Sandra Blakeslee
A Sample Summary
Summarizing “The Power of Baby Talk” by Sandra Blakeslee
I.
Pre-Writing: Reading and Thinking
A. Vocabulary to be sure of (Can you say to yourself a synonym for these words, as
they are being used by the author?): “reason abstractly,” “Established”, “utterance”,
“cumulative”, “staggering” “profound”, “conceptually”, “intervention”. Others? No?
What’s a synonym for “nurture”?
B. Critical Thinking Questions-Some Samples
Q1. What do you think the researchers had noticed about the children that
made them decide to plan and carry out this study?
A1. They must have read, in some other studies, that some children are already
ahead of other children in thinking skills, even before their first day of school.
And maybe they had also read that kids who start off behind usually remain
behind throughout their school years.
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Q2. Why did they decide to count words babies heard?
A2. Maybe there are studies that say a young school kid’s vocabulary is a good
indicator of that kid’s ability to learn all kinds of school subjects.
Q3. Why did they choose babies from families at different income levels?
A3. Maybe they had learned that kids from wealthier families generally do
better in school.
II. Writing the First Sentence
A. Sample: Researchers looking for reasons why some children are better
prepared for school learning than others found that babies in high-income
families heard many times as many words, at home, as babies in lowincome families. The article also implies that the high-income babies heard
less emotionally disturbing talk at home too.
B. Commentary: Notice that this topic sentence for the summary paragraph
contains no parts that are simply copied from the article and that it
attempts to say exactly what the entire article is about, in general, but
accurate, words.
III. Completing the Summary Paragraph
A. Now decide which words in your topic sentence are the most important,
which needs further explaining because they are emphasized in the article.
For a good summary of “Baby Talk”, the body paragraph should bring up the
facts about the income levels of the families studied the number of words
and tones of voice recorded in these different homes, and what the
researchers think their study of babies might help people understand.
Something like this (sample body of summary paragraph):
…The researchers recorded segments of all the talk that went on around
babies in professional class, working class, and welfare homes during the
babies’ preschool years. They wanted to see how much difference there was
between the amount of language exposure each class of kids had. There
was a big difference over a four-year span, 44 million words, to 24 million
words, to 12 million words. Hart and Risley think that such big differences
probably explain why some kids get off to a better start in school and keep
learning faster, than other kids.
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B. Commentary: Notice in the sample summary the phrase “language
exposure”. These are words the writer of the summary had to hunt up, so as
C.
restate, in his own words what the researchers were curious about. To a
teacher, this phrase would be clear evidence that the student had
understood the reading. Notice how the numbers in the article have been
multiplied by four by the writer of the summary. This also shows the teacher
who assigned the reading that the student understands that the article
emphasizes what a large gap in school skills occurs between children aged
birth to four years.
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