How to write a summary

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Some of you are writing summaries of what you have read.

The best way to write a summary is to try to write the most important points without looking at what you read at all. After you finish writing the summary in your own words, it is a good idea to look at the story you read to see if there are any special expressions that it would be good to use in your summary. After you have checked for special expressions that you would like to use, go back and reread your summary several times to see if you think the English is correct and that it is easy to understand.

A method that I would NOT recommend is to copy the whole text you would like to summarize and then try to cut out sentences and phrases that you don't need in order to make it shorter. This method does not work well but, unfortunately, it seems that some of you are trying to write your summaries in this way.