You’ve accomplished a lot of prewriting and organizing of your summary in earlier Try It activities. Now it is time to draft the summary itself, using the work you’ve already done and applying all of the summary skills discussed in this module.

This summary should be no longer than 1/3 the length of the original source.  (For instance, if your reading selection is 15 paragraphs long, your summary will be no longer than 5 paragraphs long.)

This summary should convey a full understanding of the original source to a person who has not read it.  It will:

• include a paraphrase of the source’s thesis or purpose
• convey the major ideas of the source
• include only brief quotations, if they are helpful to capture the unique aspects of the original source
• represent the tone and style of the source
• mimic the organizational structure of the source

(This is NOT the complete draft of the Summary and Analysis Essay. You will be adding in the “analysis” component as the last step before you submit the final draft.)