Riassumere in inglese significa comprimere un testo conservando solo le idee fondamentali, riformulandole con parole proprie e seguendo una struttura ordinata, chiara e coerente con il messaggio originale.
What is a summary?
A summary is a shorter version of a longer text that keeps only the essential ideas and leaves out details, examples and personal comments. In English-speaking schools, this skill is considered a key tool because it shows whether you have really understood what you have read. A good summary is usually one third or even one quarter of the original length, and it must be written in your own words rather than copied. Imagine you have just watched the film The Lord of the Rings and a classmate asks you what it is about: you would not retell every scene, but mention the ring, the quest and the final destruction. The same logic applies when you summarise an article from National Geographic about climate change: you keep the main argument and skip the anecdotes. Writing summaries trains memory, logical thinking and vocabulary at the same time.
Reading the text carefully
Before writing a single word, you must read the text at least twice with full attention, because summarising what you have not understood is impossible. The first reading is global: you try to grasp the general topic, the tone and the type of text, whether it is narrative, descriptive or argumentative. The second reading is analytical: you underline keywords, circle linking words and write small notes in the margins. For example, if you read a passage about Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, during the first reading you understand it is about Elizabethan theatre, while during the second you mark words like wooden structure, groundlings and open roof. Another example: in a science article about bees, you might underline pollination, colony collapse and pesticides as the load-bearing terms. Without this preparation, the summary risks becoming a list of random sentences.
Identifying the main idea of each paragraph
Every well-written paragraph contains one central idea, usually expressed in the topic sentence, often placed at the beginning or at the end. Your job is to find it and rewrite it in one short sentence using your own vocabulary. For instance, in a paragraph that explains how the Industrial Revolution changed working conditions in nineteenth-century Britain, the main idea could become: Factories replaced home workshops and forced people into long, hard shifts. In another paragraph that describes how the Internet transformed communication, the main idea might be reduced to: The Internet made global contact instant and cheap. Try to ignore secondary details, dates that are not essential and rhetorical questions. If a paragraph contains two equally important ideas, you may join them with a linker such as and, but or because.
Joining the sentences into a coherent paragraph
Once you have one sentence per paragraph, you must link them so that the result reads as a single, smooth text rather than a shopping list. English uses connectors that show time (first, then, finally), addition (moreover, in addition), contrast (however, on the other hand) and cause (because, therefore, as a result). For example, if your three sentences are about the discovery of penicillin, its mass production and its impact on medicine, you could write: First, Fleming discovered penicillin by chance in 1928; later, scientists learned to produce it on a large scale; as a result, millions of lives were saved during the Second World War. A second example: in a summary of a novel, you might join the chapters with then, meanwhile and in the end. Good linking turns isolated ideas into a real argument.
Using your own words and the right tense
A summary must be a genuine rewriting, not a collage of phrases copied from the original, otherwise it becomes plagiarism and shows no comprehension. Use synonyms, change the syntactic structure and prefer simple, direct sentences over complicated ones. For narrative texts and reports of past events, the present simple is often chosen to make the story more vivid: In Oliver Twist, Dickens describes a poor orphan who runs away to London. For informative or scientific texts, you usually keep the original tense, especially the present simple for general truths: The heart pumps blood through the body. Avoid the first person I think or in my opinion: a summary is objective and reports the author's ideas, not yours. If you really need a technical term that has no synonym, such as photosynthesis or sonnet, you may keep it.
Common mistakes to avoid
Many students fall into predictable traps when they summarise for the first time. The first mistake is copying long sentences word for word, which produces a patchwork without personal understanding. The second is including small details, dialogues or numbers that the original used as examples but that are not essential to the argument. A third mistake is adding personal opinions, comments or judgements, which break the objective nature of the text. A fourth one is forgetting linkers, so the summary sounds like a telegram: He went. He saw. He left. Finally, many students write a summary that is almost as long as the original, defeating its very purpose. For example, summarising a two-page article on the French Revolution in a page and a half is not a summary, it is a slightly shorter copy.
Useful expressions for summaries
English offers a rich set of formulas that make your summary sound natural and academic. To introduce the text you can write: The text/article/extract is about, The author discusses, The passage deals with. To report what the writer claims you may use: According to the author, The writer argues that, The text points out that. To organise the content you can rely on connectors such as firstly, secondly, in addition, on the contrary, in conclusion. For example, a summary of an article on social media could open with: The article deals with the impact of social networks on teenagers. A summary of Romeo and Juliet could begin: The play tells the tragic love story of two young people from rival families in Verona. Keeping a small personal list of these expressions in your notebook makes writing much faster.
Ricorda
- A summary is a shorter, faithful version of the original, written in your own words.
- Read the text at least twice and underline the keywords before writing.
- Find one main idea per paragraph and turn it into one short sentence.
- Join the sentences with linkers to create a coherent paragraph, not a list.
- Stay objective: no personal opinions, no copied phrases, no useless details.
- Use clear connectors and academic formulas such as The author argues that or In conclusion.
Small self-check: take any half-page text from your English book, copy it on your notebook and follow these steps in order. First, read it twice and underline the keywords; second, write one sentence for each paragraph in your own words; third, join the sentences with at least three different linkers; finally, count the words and check that your summary is no longer than one third of the original. Compare your result with a classmate and discuss which sentences could be shortened even more.