Summarising
Students sometimes ask what the difference is between summarising and paraphrasing. It is helpful to see it in terms of ratio. In a paraphrase, the writer does not dramatically condense the length of the original source material. Summarising, on the other hand, involves identifying the key points in a longer piece of writing and representing these in a much shorter form.
Process for Summarising Texts
When summarising scholarly material, there are standard approaches that many academics follow. These include:
1. Mapping the Source Text
2. Identifying Key Ideas
3. Combining Notes & Creating a Final Draft
Oxford Summary Example
Please follow the link below to see a step-by-step example of how a summary was created:
Examples