WRITING A SUMMARY

A summary is a short account of a passage that contains only the main points of any reading passage. The first sentence should capture the main idea or most important information. In a folktale or fable, the main point is the lesson or underlying moral of the story, which reflects the storyteller's original purpose in writing the tale.

The first sentence of a summary also cites the title, author, and source of the story. In the example below, note that the title of the folktale is in quotation marks and the title of the book is either in italics or underlined.

The body of a summary contains only the facts of the story. Opinions, value judgments, and all of the sensory details that make the events come alive have no place in a summary. Only objective information should be included in summary writing. To make the events more immediate, present narration is used. In other words, the simple present tense is used to make the events more immediate to the reader.

In the table below, the events that occur in "Why the Baby Says Goo" are partially outlined. Note that each event triggers a response in a continuous chain of cause and effect. Your task is to make your own table, completing the information in each cell and then to write the summary. The information in the first cell on each side is given.

Now write the summary. Use present tense to narrate the summary. You can use the topic sentence given above or write your own.

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