Summarizing (from Purdue OWL)

A summary should be a short version of a longer original source. Its main goal is to present a large amount of information in a short and concise text that includes only the most important ideas of the original text.

Example

Original sentence:

“The movement toward education by computer is developing fast. Massive Open Online Courses, called MOOCs, are changing how people learn in many places. For years, people could receive study materials from colleges or universities and take part in online classes. But such classes were not designed for many thousands of students at one time, as MOOCs are.” (MOOCs Are Moving Forward, Voice of America, learningenglish.voanews.com)

Inappropriate summary:

Voice of America website:

“Computer education is growing fast. MOOCs are influencing how we study. People received materials from universities for a long time to be able to take classes online. MOOCs are the only ones thousands can take at a time.”

The inappropriate summary is almost as long as the original text, which is a characteristic of a paraphrase. A summary needs to be concise.

Appropriate summary:

 According to a Voice of America article, a fast-growing MOOCs movement allows thousands to take online classes at once, changing how we learn.

The appropriate summary keeps the original main idea and it is much shorter than the original text.