SCIE 1000 01F Intro to Scientific Inquiry Padgett

 Summarizing

• Shorter than the original text and provides an overview

• Only highlights key ideas

• Summaries still need to be referenced

How to Summarize

• Identify key ideas (most important) of your passage/paper

• Write down these key ideas in your own words

• Do NOT add your own reflections. Summarize only

• Remind your reader that someone else has written the original piece. i.e. - Smith (2021) states.....She further says.....

• Cite and Reference Original Source

Sample Summary

Original Source 
Pendergrast, M. (1999). Uncommon grounds: The history of coffee and how it transformed our world. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Coffee is an extraordinarily delicate commodity. Its quality is first determined by essentials such as type of plant, soil conditions, and growing altitude. It can be ruined at every step along the line, from fertilizer and pesticide application to harvesting methods to processing to shipping to roasting to packaging to brewing. A coffee bean greedily absorbs odors and flavors from a host of nauseating companions. Too much moisture produces mold. A too–light roast produces undeveloped, bitter coffee, while overroasted coffee resembles charcoal. After roasting, the bean stales quickly unless used within a week or so. Boiling or sitting on a hot plate quickly reduces the finest brew to a stale, bitter, mouth–turning cup of black bile. In addition, it can be adulterated with an astonishing array of vegetable matter, ranging from chicory to figs.

Student Version
In his introduction to Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World, Mark Pendergrast (1999) explains that coffee is an easy–to–manipulate—maybe even temperamental—bean that requires special attention for the duration of its lifespan, growth to consumption (p. xvi).

*Note: Citations Styles in the Examples may not be the citation style you are expected to use for your research

Paraphrasing

How to Paraphrase

• Keep Original Meaning and Present it in a new form
• Write in your own words

Sample Paraphrase

• Paraphrasing can be done with individual sentences or entire paragraphs. Here are some examples:

Original Sentence

“Giraffes like Acacia leaves and hay, and they can consume 65 pounds of food a day” (“National Geographic,” 2013, p.16).

Paraphrased version:

A giraffe can eat up to 65 pounds of Acacia leaves and hay every day (“National Geographic,” 2013, p.16).

Original paragraph:

“ The feminization of clerical work and teaching by the turn of the century reflected the growth of business and public education. It also reflected limited opportunities elsewhere. Throughout the nineteenth century, stereotyping of work by sex had restricted women's employment. Job options were limited; any field that admitted women attracted a surplus of applicants willing to work for less pay than men would have received. The entry of women into such fields—whether grammar school teaching or office work—drove down wages.”

Woloch, N. (2002). Women and the American experience: A concise history. New York, NY: McGraw–Hill Higher Education.

Paraphrased version:

According to Nancy Woloch (2002) in Women and the American Experience: A Concise History, the “feminization” of jobs in the nineteenth century had two major effects: a lack of employment opportunities for women and inadequate compensation for positions that were available. Thus, while clerical and teaching jobs indicated a boom in these sectors, women were forced to apply for jobs that would pay them less than male workers were paid (p. 170).

• Underline and List the key points and main ideas
• Come up with alternative phrases and synonyms to describe the ideas
• Rewrite and reorder these ideas in your own words
• Use a signal phrase when necessary to introduce the original author/s  i.e. - As indicated by Smith and Jones (2019)...
• Cite and Reference