33 Selective Summary Writing
What is a Selective Summary?
Any article can be summarized selectively. Unlike a global summary, however, you do not summarize all the subtopics and main ideas. Instead, your task is to summarize only what the author says about one or two subtopics discussed in the article. A prompt is provided to you , indicating the selected focus. You must follow this prompt in order to write the summary.
This sort of summarizing closely resembles how students use sources in college-level research papers, like the ones you will write in ESL 117, ESL 118, and beyond. Writing a selective summary provides a chance to develop particularly useful academic skills:
a) Effective use of a prompt and adherence to assignment guidelines.
b) Intensive reading of an article to separate focused information from secondary or unnecessary information.
c) Further practice of note-taking and paraphrasing skills.
Prompt Example:
The text to be summarized is Lauren Cassani Davis’ “When Mindfulness Meets the Classroom”. You are to summarize only the information on why mindfulness is being used in elementary schools, and the the scientific evidence concerning mindfulness’ efficacy for children. |
Summary prompts will indicate focused information that will be dispersed in various areas of the article. Therefore, you must do intensive reading and group main ideas that may be located in different sections, paragraphs, and/or pages of the article. Many of these ideas will be repetitive, but others won’t.
The Start of a Selective Summary and Attribution
As with any summary, the first sentence in the introductory paragraph must include an initial attribution to the author and title, as well as the main idea of the entire article.
What is different is that immediately after the first sentence, your summary will need to indicate the narrower scope indicated in the prompt. Then you will only summarize the parts of the original article that are relevant for the prompt you are responding to. The length of your selective summary will vary depending on how much the author writes about the focused prompt subtopic, and how long your instructor indicates your summary should be.
One (but not the only) way to begin the second sentence of the selective summary is with:
“In doing so, Davis… ”
The attribution rules apply throughout the summary. As in a Global Summary, it is necessary to keep clear who is saying any particular piece of information—that is, when the article’s author is saying something, and when the author is reporting what someone else says. For example:
Davis says that Mark Greenberg, a psychologist at Penn State University, is skeptical about the true impact of mindfulness use among elementary school children because there is not enough research yet on this area.
The rules for attribution to the “owner” of this idea also apply here. The first time you include someone’s name, it should be the complete name and include information about who the person is; thereafter, use only the family name (e.g., Greenberg). The example above would be the first time Greenberg’s name was used in the summary.
Important
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Do not copy the main ideas textually from the article. This is called plagiarism. You must not do it.
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Instead, paraphrase. See the Pressbook portions on paraphrase to remind yourself of how to paraphrase appropriately and well. Paraphrase is hard, but you get better with practice.
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In addition, do not use AI or any software that translates or otherwise provides artificially generated language that is not yours. Always check with your instructor about their guidelines for Generative AI use on any particular assignment before you use it.
