Final answer:
Summarizing a text involves condensing the main ideas and important details into a shorter version in your own words. It is important to consider the type of text and pay attention to repeated statements, claims, reasoning, and language features to create an effective summary.
Step-by-step explanation:
A summary is a condensed version of a longer text that reviews its main ideas. Shorter than the original text, a summary is written in your own words. To prepare a summary, you may outline or annotate the text to highlight relationships between ideas or conclusions. Reread sections of the text such as abstracts, first and last paragraphs, and sections titled "Summary," "Observations," or "Conclusion(s)." Also consider headings,
If the text is informational, try to capture the statements that are repeated or that pull together or summarize ideas. These are often critical elements to understand and possibly evaluate later. If the text is argumentative, examine the claim, reasoning, and each piece of supporting evidence. You can always go back to examine evidence or look up sources the author used when you want to gain a better understanding of the text's purpose and position in a larger conversation. If the text is literary, pay extra attention to language features, such as images, metaphors, and crisp dialogue. Often, authors use these elements to help create a character, such as a character that always says "ya know" after every sentence, thus making a character more individual and realistic.