Summarizing Exercise

There are three ways to include source material in your research paper writing: summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. Each of these strategies capitalizes on different types of information that can be useful. The following exercise is designed to help you both gather content for your current work and learn different summarizing techniques.

Summarizing is putting the main points of a particular passage into your own words without interpreting or taking a position about the main points. Using InfoTrac® College Edition or an online search engine, find an article that helps support the claim you intend to make in your research paper. Summarize the main points here in your own words. Be sure to cite your summary correctly (using the citation style your instructor prefers), including in-text citations and a list of works cited.
How is summarizing useful for research paper writing? Why should you use this strategy of writing?
Summaries help provide support for claims and add credibility to your writing. How might the summary you just created, specifically, provide support and credibility to your research paper?
Summaries highlight particularly useful phrases. If these phrases are original in the text you’re summarizing, you should put them in quotation marks. Write the paragraph that will use this summary. Include a topic sentence. Put a key word from your summary into the topic sentence. How does this help unify your thought in this paragraph?
Pick another article using InfoTrac® College Edition or a search engine. Gather the information you need and summarize it here, correctly formatting your work, of course. Write the paragraph for which this summarized information will be used in support. Re-read the paragraph and discuss if it is clear what information is summarized and what information is YOUR writing. If it is not clear, make it so. Otherwise, you’re in danger of plagiarism. What makes your writing clearly distinct from your summary of a passage?

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