How to make a summary? Essential Tips (with examples)

Abstracts are an excellent help when studying. With them, you can refresh your memory and ensure that you absorb matter much faster.

Some tips are essential when making summaries and that's why Toda Materia is here to help you do the ideal summary.

1. Highlight the most important concepts

student highlighting text

There are people who need to read more often to internalize the subject dealt with in the text, for others, just a slow and well-concentrated reading is enough to ensure their understanding.

A good tip is that, when reading, you should highlight the text with a marker, in order to highlight what is most important. Do this for paragraphs. This step will serve to transcribe to another support the most relevant ideas of the content read.

2. write the key points

hand writing

After reading and highlighting the main points of the text, transfer the main ideas to another medium - computer or notebook.

And if it works better for you, instead of highlighting the text, you can try to concentrate on reading and start transcribing what is essential.

Not only will you be focused on reading, writing will help you further memorize the essential content of what you are reading.

3. make schemes or lists

Mind Map of Feudalism

If you respond better to visual stimuli, this tip is for you!

On the computer or on a sheet of paper, draw what you are reading in a way that makes sense to you. It's worth making diagrams and lists - anything that makes your memory easier - using keywords.

The goal is that after reading and writing your outlines, you will have good support for writing an abstract in your own words.

4. explain out loud

student talking in megaphone

This is for anyone with auditory memory. Reading aloud, or reading and explaining what you've read, is a great way to get the most relevant content.

With everything fresh in memory, the next step is to organize what you wrote down and write your summary. Connected computer or open notebook. Let's get to it!

5. Organize ideas and go!

Drawing of light bulbs representing ideas on a board

After the steps and tips we gave you above, write a cohesive and coherent little text. Remember that a summary is a compilation of the original content, so it has to be a lot less extensive.

Also, it is important not to add personal comments - this is a feature of the review.

Finally, read on. Check if, despite being summarized, your text includes the main points contained in the original text and, finally, if it makes sense for those who read it.

Examples of abstracts

Check out the summaries we've selected for you:

Summary made in list

Summary Nominal Agreement

Summary done in outline

Summary of European Vanguards

book summary

Check summaries of books that Toda Matéria has prepared for you:

  • Rachel de Queiroz's Fifteen
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: Summary by Chapter
  • Os Sertões, by Euclides da Cunha
  • Death and Severe Life

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