Academic summaries are one way writers account for the ideas of others in their own writing. They tell the main point of the source material in condensed form. They can range in length from a few sentences or short paragraph to an entire essay, depending on the length of the source material. When writing a summary, you must select the main points of the text, and express them in your own words. The most important part of summary writing is to carefully credit the ideas to the original writer, not yourself as the writer of the summary. Remember that the purpose of a summary is to accurately express the ideas of another writer. You must be extremely careful that you do not imply that the ideas are yours.

Academic summaries typically answer the following three questions:

What is the author’s main idea or argument?
How does the author support the main idea or argument?
Why did the author write the text?

Academic Summary Steps:

Introduce the text to your reader. Note the title, author, type of text, and what the text is
Remember that your reader may not be familiar with the text, so be as specific as
(1-3 sentences)
Describe the author’s main idea or argument. Refer to the author by his/her name. Do

not use a direct quote: instead, articulate in your own words what you think the point of

the text is. (1-3 sentences)

Explain how the author supports the main idea or argument. Keep an eye out for how the

author organizes and/or divides up the text (are there sub-headings?). Pay attention to

the author’s use of evidence, quotes from experts, examples from history, etc. The author

might also use certain language or literary devices to support an argument. (1-3

sentences)

Interpret why you think the author wrote the text. What is the context, or background,

for this topic? Who is the audience? What does the author intend for the audience to take

away from the text?

Academic Summary Tips:

Remember that the goal of your summary is to give a concise, specific overview of a text for someone who has not read that text.
Include a bit of context about the text early on in your summary. Mention what kind of text it is, when/where it was published, etc.
Use author-focused language; refer to the author’s full name first, and then his/her last name thereafter.
Explain the what/how/why of the text in your own words (minimal use of quotes).
Be specific as possible. If your summary can work for any other text, it is too broad.

Sample Academic Summary:

Sherman Alexie’s short story, “Indian Education,” is about (Step 1) the story of Victor Polatkin (Junior), a Native American kid growing up in poverty on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Through the fictional story, Alexie argues (Step 2) that while schools are supposed to be places of opportunity and growth, they often subject poor, minority students to harsh situations of racism and inequality. Alexie supports (Step 3) his points by giving examples of teachers who judge and punish Victor: the teacher who demanded he cut his braids, the teacher who forced him to eat paper after he aced a test, the teacher who accused him of being drunk when he was actually suffering from the effects of diabetes. In one key scene, Victor imagines becoming a doctor and saving people in an emergency room, which a sad reminder of how he’s unable to help himself or his struggling parents in his day-to-day life on the reservation. Ultimately, Alexie wrote (Step 4) this story to critique the how the institutions of education betray students and are complicit in maintaining racism and inequality.

“Girl,” a prose poem written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1983, explores the expectations and responsibilities faced by young women in Antigua. The poem is written as series of commands that an unnamed mother issues an anonymous adolescent girl; the directives that make up the poem instruct the girl in how to properly cook food, clean a house, care for a man, and generally be a respectable woman in that society. Kincaid uses repetition with phrases like “this is how to,” and diction that refers to culturally specific norms, like meals, songs, and common superstitions. Kincaid uses these devices to make her point that women’s roles in this society are circumscribed and heavily dependent on other people’s expectations and judgements, especially those of men. Kincaid both critiques and celebrates the mother’s role in preparing the girl for these expectations. While Kincaid presents the mother as unrelentingly authoritarian, she also implies that this mother is invested helping the girl carve out an independent and happy life. Through the poem, Kincaid suggests that the passing down of gender roles is a complex cultural inheritance in Antigua, one of survival and love.