Summary and Information Transfer
What summarising requires
A summary restates the main points of a text in your own words, in far fewer words, without adding opinion or example. You need to select relevant information, discard repetition and illustration, compress ideas using general words, and keep the original meaning intact. Information transfer asks you to move facts from prose into a table, list, form or set of notes, often under a strict word limit.
Method
- Read twice: once for gist, once with a pencil.
- Underline or number each distinct main point. Expect roughly one point per paragraph.
- Write each point in a short phrase of your own, using general terms for lists of examples (fruit for apples, pears and mangoes).
- Count your words and cut adjectives, examples and repetition.
- Check that nothing important is missing and nothing new has been added.
Traps that appear in questions
- Copying whole sentences instead of rewriting - this loses marks for language.
- Including examples that the question did not ask for, wasting the word limit.
- Adding your own opinion or outside knowledge.
- Missing a point buried mid-paragraph.
- Ignoring the word limit or the required format (notes, not sentences; bullets, not prose).
- Changing meaning by over-compressing: “the scheme was partly successful” must not become “the scheme succeeded”.
Worked example
Passage: “The library now opens until 9 p.m. on weekdays, offers free Wi-Fi, runs a homework club on Tuesdays, and has doubled its stock of large-print books.” Summary in about 15 words: “Longer weekday hours, free Wi-Fi, a Tuesday homework club and more large-print books.” Note that examples were kept only where they were the point, and no opinion was added.
Rule of thumb
A good summary could be read instead of the original by someone short of time, and they would still know everything essential.