Response to the reading of Swales & Feak (1994)’s unit 5: Writing Summaries

This chapter introduces how to write summaries. As a graduate student, I am asked to read many articles and write reflections on them. Sometimes, I concern how I can read so many articles in a limited time because most of TESOL-MALL articles are quite long and students are supposed to read several ones in a week. According to Swales and Feak (1994), formal summaries need to be done by following guidelines (p.114);

• Try to paraphrase except for technical terms
• Include enough details to present the content clearly
• Just cite specialized vocabularies or technical terms without paraphrasing
• Do not include writers’ comments or evaluation

As I compare draft summary with rewrite summary (p.115), I recognized that readers will be difficult to understand summaries clearly if authors do not write summaries properly.

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In addition, I realized that comparative summaries are different from traditional summaries. The one is more complicated and comprehensible. I need to write comparative summaries for my literature review and then “it needs to infer and make explicit the relationships among my sources” (Swales & Feak, 1994, p.127).

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In conclusion, when we summarize articles, we need to paraphrase except special words and infer and explain clearly for comparative summaries!

Swales, J. & Feak, C. B. (1994). Writing Summaries. Academic writing for graduate students: A course for non-native speakers of English (pp.105-130). Ann Arbor, MI: the University of Michigan Press.