Outlining Practice for Summary Writing

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Published on Thursday, 08 May 2014 07:32

Written by Andrew Carlisle

We did a lot of practice at writing summaries of articles (mostly from News for You) this term. One activity that worked well was to bring two different articles to the class and give each out to half of the students. I asked them to read the article and on a piece of paper, take notes. I asked them to try to write down the main idea of the article (in their own words) and list the important details. I gave them about ten minutes for this.

Next, I took away the articles and paired them with somebody who read the other article. They took turns explaining the article to the other person, using only their notes. They did not realize that they were basically giving an oral summary at this point. The listener would also ask questions about areas where they were unclear.

The next step was to pair up with someone who read the same article. I gave each pair a large piece of newsprint (butcher paper) and markers and asked them to make an outline of the article. They still could not use the article; only their notes. After about ten minutes, I asked each pair to give an informal presentation to the class with their outline.

The final step was for each student to write a summary, using only their notes and the newsprint outline. They still could not look at the article. Many students complained about not using the article, but the results were very positive. 

The two main benefits of writing the summary in this way, without the article, is that, for one, this process helped them really understand what the important points were and what was less important for the summary. Also, since they were writing without the article, it helped them find ways to paraphrase some of the ideas. Of course, many sentences/phrases in their notes and the outlines might have been copied, but not everything.