Summarizing

Wrap-up

Writing summaries can help you remember main ideas – whether they're from spoken directions, a teacher’s explanation, a newspaper article, a novel, or a movie.

In this lesson you:

• Reviewed the basics of summarizing
• Identified main idea statements and detail statements
• Used categories to summarize lists

On your own:

• Read summaries anywhere you can find them – in the newspaper, a TV guide, the backs of books and video boxes, and travel guides. Compare the summaries to the full-length versions. Were the summaries accurate?
• Summarize a movie or TV show you saw recently. See if you can do it in fifty words or less. It's not as easy as you think!
• Practice using summaries when you tell a story, take a phone message, or describe symptoms to your doctor.