How to Write a Summary of an Academic Book

Compiling a comprehensive summary of a college textbook involves using all of the basic skills acquired in years of schooling. These include an ability to read and comprehend college-level material at a relatively rapid rate; a knowledge of concise summation, and the ability to quickly find the main idea contained in paragraphs, topical sections and chapters of a textbook; and the writing ability to combine sectional summaries into a comprehensive outline of the text. By heeding the following guidelines, the student will gain a thorough understanding of the summation and outlining process.

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Word processing software

Instructions

1. Understanding the content of a college textbook is the planned end result of the written summation process. Summarizing a textbook requires reading for main ideas, concepts and supporting facts. Conciseness and brevity are both needed in reducing pages of a textbook chapter to 2 pages of a summary. The chapter summation should include the definition of the key concept(s), followed by facts or examples supporting the definition. This format should be followed for every key principle or concept in successive chapters. Remember that succinctness and brevity are essential in summarization. Synonyms should be used, when possible, to make the material more understandable.

2. Understand that each new chapter of a college textbook begins with a topic that subsumes the previous chapter's topic, and that the chapter includes new material that may only be understood if the previous chapter's material is comprehended. This will allow the student to realize the importance of successive learning, that every important concept that is presented is predicated on a previously important concept. When a 10-page chapter summary is completed, the student should have no more than 5 summarized pages.

3. Completion of all chapter summaries will allow the student to produce a comprehensive outline that incorporates all of the material contained in the summaries into an easier and more usable form. The outline should also take the progressive format, using Roman numerals, letters and numbers to restate the concepts and key principles and supporting facts. Or the student may use the combined summaries as originally produced. The summaries will coincide with the professor's syllabus, and, in all probability, the student will come away from the completed summaries with a sufficient understanding of the textbook material. When coupled with the many pages of lecture notes the student will, no doubt, compile in a semester's time, the summary will prove invaluable when studying for examinations.

4. Using a textbook summary effectively will allow students to put their leaned material into a retrievable order. Math, the biological and physical sciences, the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences all require a systematic order of learning, where greater precepts are predicated upon preceding precepts as a means establishing the unity of a discipline.

Tips & Warnings

• Enrolling in a speed-reading program will allow the average student to improve the basic skills which will determine her ability to excel in college-level courses. Learning how to write with clarity and brevity, using proper rules of English grammar, will enhance a student's ability to quickly consume the material contained in college textbooks. In a nutshell, one must prepare to learn effectively, and the preparation of a suitable textbook summation is only one of the tools for determining success in college.