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Summary Help



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Mon Mar 21, 2016 2:14 am
leslieloo says...



Hi, guys! I have to summarize an article and it happens to be very lengthy and hard to understand. The summary has to be five pages and is due a week from now, so can you guys give me tips on how to summarize a long article? Thanks!
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Wed Mar 23, 2016 7:19 pm
niteowl says...



Hey! I meant to reply to this earlier but I forgot, but I saw an article that may be relevant to what you're doing. Is the article in question a scientific paper? If so, here's the article I read about how scientists go about reading and understanding scientific papers. Link

Even if the article you're talking about is not scientific, some of the tips may still help, especially looking at the other papers the authors cite (at least the important ones), and making sure you understand the key claims being made and the evidence used to support those claims. You can also use Google and Wikipedia to help get a basic understanding of some concepts, though you definitely do not want to cite them in an assignment.

Not sure how much else I can help you without knowing anything about the article.
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci

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Fri Apr 01, 2016 2:35 am
Dracula says...



Well, a 'summary' in five pages? That sounds more complicated than a summary. XD Some tips I'd give are:
-Grab some highlighters. With one colour, highlight any main points that you do understand and can write about. With another colour, highlight anything that seems like a main point, but that you don't really understand. Then, start writing about the bits you understand. Once you start breaking it apart, the other bits might start to make sense too.
-Split the article into different sections or paragraphs. Try writing your own paragraph about each section. Then put it all together and you might have a nice report.
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