English Ten Ms. Carla Kurt Ten Percent Summary – Type 3
Project Summary	Summarizing has long been held as a highly prized academic skill. Summarizing is also an essential life skill. Think of all the times in everyday life you use summarizing skills: recapping a day, telling about a vacation, giving the highlights of a social event, providing the major points of a decision-making process, describing an exciting sporting event—the list goes on. In the Information Age in which you are growing up, with its abundance of easy-to-access information, summarizing becomes an even more important processing skill. Without the ability to sort out and distill information, you run the risk of being overwhelmed in a sea of data. Summaries have the following characteristics: · Shorter than the original text · Follow the organizational pattern of the original text · Include main ideas · Do not include the opinion of the person writing the summary · Paraphrase the original author’s words This assignment requires that you create a summary of an article that is ten percent of its length.
Writer’s Purpose	Write the main ideas of the assigned article in your own words. Include the most important details within the permitted word limit. Remember to include clear, accurate information with no personal opinion.
Writer’s Role	You are writing as yourself, a student who wants to improve his or her ability to effectively summarize information.
Audience	Your audience is your peer group, who will benefit from your ability to share important summarized information.
Form	Write a summary of the assigned article in approximately ten percent of the words. You may have a few more or a few less than ten percent; for example, if your article is 1,000 words, you may write between 90 and 1110 words.
FCAs	_______/10 Include S.A.“T” (source underline, author, title in quotes) _______/50 Include 3-5 (#) main points in approximately ten percent of the words _______/30 no more than 4 words in a row taken from the original text _______/10 Include one short, correctly punctuated quotation (3-6 words) in your summary.
Procedure	o Read the article according to guidelines given in class. General strategies: § Read through quickly, and then go back and read carefully. § The first few paragraphs (10 – 20 percent of the article) usually contain the author’s position on the topic. § Read the first sentence of the middle paragraphs (middle 60 – 80 percent of the article) carefully. They usually tell the main ideas. § Read the last paragraphs (last 10 –20 percent of the article) carefully. They usually sum up the main points. o Draft your summary. Keep a running word count at the end of each line so you know where you are in the ten percent summary. o Read your summary in a one-foot voice; make any changes that will improve your summary. You may also work with a partner to get feedback and peer editing. o Rewrite the summary with all the improvements.