Part Ⅰ
What are the key points about summary writing?
According to the research and I’ve learned, these key points below are necessary in summary writing:
1. 5W questions
5W questions, namely, WHEN, WHERE, WHO, WHAT, HOW. They provide basic idea of whole article. When we write summary, it should be mentioned in the beginning of writing, to let your readers know what is going to talk about in the summary.
Tip:
5W questions can be found in the beginning of article in general.
2. Main idea
Main idea is soul of summary. It shows what is summary talking about, and gives a view of what is going to be next.
Tip:
There are two ways to write main idea in a summary mainly---in the beginning or in the end.
3. Use your own words
This is a point which people easy to ignore. Because, we always think summary comes from article, we use the words from article without any changing. Actually, one of key points of summary writing is---use your words to replace the article words, and keep them in same meaning. Sometimes, it’s a useful way to create your summary, and don't follow what do you read from article. The purpose of summary writing is to prove you understand the article instead a “copy machine”.
Tip:
If you confuse with synonyms, check dictionary, and get closer one.
4. Examples
People usually think a summary shouldn’t include examples. On the contrary, summary writing needs to provide examples. Examples decorates summary, and makes it more vivid. Writing main idea, meanwhile, adding examples to make them support main idea.
Tip:
When you choose example, you don't need write it in details, only writing it down briefly.
5. Transition words
Transition words can keep the summary in right order. They gives readers a clear organization,and easy to them follow their reading speed.
6. Keep it short
Finally, summary writing should keep in short because it is concluding paragraph only.
How can you write a good summary?
Basically, to follow these four steps, you’ll learn a way to write a good summary.
1. Read article, and underline or highlight key words.
After you read, even you don't catch meaning in that moment, key words can give you a idea what is article about. And also, when you begin to write summary, scan keys words without re-read can save time.
2. Organize key words, and write sentences for each paragraph.
Base on key words, to add information, make it be sentence, and to summarize paragraph. Don't forget to use examples.
3. Put all sentences together, and subtract repeat ideas from sentences.
Some paragraph tells a same meaning in the article, hence, paragraph summary brings some similar meaning sometime. To check it careful and to subtract repeat part, keep summary short.
4. Then, use the rest of sentences to write a summary.
Put sentences in a paragraph, use transition words to organize order, and finish you summary writing.
references:
Part Ⅱ
The key ideas and skills we learned in chapter 1
In the unit 1, we studied about the skills of reading and writing through several aspects of sport.
[First we learned how to understand the vocabulary which we have never seen in context.]
★Strategy1: guess the meaning from the context. Try to get the more information and guess the meaning of unknown words from the second sentences.
★Strategy 2: guess the meaning from root words, prefixes and suffixes. If we know the root of the words, we can guess the meaning easily. The prefixes
★Strategy3: keep reading without knowing the meaning of every word, in order to finish reading quickly. It is not needed to understand all of the meaning of vocabulary, If we can understand the main points of writing. So we have to decide if the new words is important or not.
[Second, we learned how to scan for key words. ]
When we have to answer the set of questions with reading, It is helpful for us to read the questions first. Questions sometimes give us the key word and make us read more easily.
[Third, We learned how to Improve our writing skills with specific vocabulary]
It is helpful to select specific and descriptive vocabulary for improving written and spoken English
It means specific and descriptive vocabulary will help readers and listener to understand the exact meaning of our writing .Not relying on the dictionary and thesaurus, we need to think which words (we can already recognize) is better for the sentence. We can use the dictionary and thesaurus as a last resort.
[Fourth, we learned how to write a short answer]
★review what we know and decide on the content that we want to include in our short answer.
★to organize our short answer logically and briefly whatever we can recognize the way.
[Fifth, we learned how to identify the key words in questions]
Before scanning the writing , look at the questions first. Then after recognizing key words in each questions, try to scan the writing.
[Lastly we learned how to introduce examples into a text]
We learned it’s important to support our key point and provide more information to the reader by using examples with specific paraphrase or abbreviations.
It is also important to recognize the position of the example in sentence.
