Graduate Writing: Summarizing

The main activity you work on in Graduate Writing I is a summary of a journal article. Summarizing is a skill you will use throughout your time at Walden--and it involves actively reading to determine the crucial points of an article and then articulating those points in your own words. 

Summarizing begins with active and efficient reading of the journal article. Follow these steps to ensure that you are taking an active role in the reading process and being efficient with your time:

1. Preread. Record the title. Skim the abstract. What do you learn just from these short representations of the article? 

2. Read for the facts. Who? What? Why? Where? When? How? Because a summary is a brief description of the article, it should include important factual details. Read for these details (answered by the questions above) and take notes on them. If you are in a rush, try reading the first sentence of each paragraph. The first sentence is typically the topic sentence, so it can tell you what the paragraph is about overall.

3. Reread for understanding. After you have read through once and taken notes on the facts, read through again to ensure that you understand what you have absorbed. If the authors use unfamiliar words or key terms, look them up in the dictionary or perform a Google search. While reading, stop periodically to remind yourself what you learned in each section.

4. Determine main points. Ultimately, what was the purpose of the study and what did the study reveal on the topic? Now it's time to think about the article as a whole and the three main points that define it. 

Tip: The main points can usually be found in the Results/Findings and Discussion sections, rather than the preliminary sections of the article. The Results/Findings and Discussion sections convey the outcome of the study and what conclusions the authors drew from it. Earlier sections set up the topic and refer to other studies.

See Reading a Research Article for an orientation to the sections of a journal article and how to approach it. 

Sometimes it can be difficult to take on the voice and language of a scholar. The words might seem foreign to you, or overly formal. Get more comfortable writing in this style by practicing with the templates below. The templates below can help with your summary. 

• According to X, ____________________. 
• In their study, X and Y found that ___________________. 
• X conducted a study exploring _________________. 
• The purpose of the study was _____________________.
• The results were __________________. 
• Overall, X and Y determined that _______________________.