Do you know how to make an excellent summary?
One of the most effective study techniques is the abstract – whether for high school students or those preparing for the entrance exam or for students already enrolled in graduation.
This strategy helps in the acquisition of knowledge, as it reinforces what was read in books, handouts and other materials.
But not only that!
This is also a great ally to optimize the time of reviews and increase concentration on the eve of a race, for example.
How to Make an Excellent Summary
That’s what we’ll see from now on. Check out!
1. Read carefully
In your study schedule, certainly, the basic method for learning is through reading. To effectively summarize, this step is also critical. So stop whatever you’re doing and focus on the stories. Get rid of distractions, such as social media, and prefer a quiet place for this dedication.
So, go on to the reading itself. Whenever you don’t understand some information well, go back to the beginning of the excerpt as many times as necessary. The important thing is not to skip any lines or leave the learning attempt for later. After all, it can be an essential paragraph to understand what’s to come.
2. Mark important parts
During this careful reading, take the opportunity to mark the most important points in each chapter. Think about the keywords to understand the passage and highlight them: it can be with a highlighter of different colours or even with a pen. Don’t forget to mark dates, formulas, quotes or whatever you think is relevant.
What if an entire paragraph is important? In order not to pollute the sheet or book, you can make this marking with coloured square brackets or arrows. Highlight so that, when summarizing, you can easily find these excerpts.
3. Annotate comments
Did you have any ideas while reading or marking the important parts? Better write it down soon so you don’t forget. If you don’t want to do this in the book or handout, use post-its, indicating which passage this comment refers to. If you want to supplement the information, this tactic is also quite valid.
These comments are like preparation for the summary. They represent your understanding of the subject, something that can be used a lot in organizing the information –– as we will see later in this content.
4. Think about correlations
One of the memorization techniques is to relate the content you’ve just read to something you already know. This is a way to activate your brain to assimilate information, with a good chance that it will be retained. It is also a valuable practice to become familiar with interdisciplinarity, which is characteristic of many entrance exams and even of Enem – apart from the importance in the performance of a professional.
5. Organize the information
Important parts in the way and thought correlations? In many cases, it will be a large amount of information that, in order to form an efficient summary, will need maximum organization. Like other strategies, this is a way to make your life easier when studying to reach your goal.
An example of the organization is from questions. In this case, you select what you need to know about a particular subject and ask these questions, with their respective answers, on the summary sheet. But, if you prefer, you can use schemes: from the theme keywords, pull new information by means of arrows.
Remember that there is no formula for this organization. Every student learns in a way and, because of that, certain techniques will work better than others. It’s interesting to test varieties to see what suits your needs.
Read also: Online Learning Instructional Design Models: How to Get Students Engaged
6. Write in your own words
At some point, given the rush with studies, you might ask yourself: why not get ready-made abstracts on the internet? They even work to understand structures and have ideas of how to select the key points of the content, but they don’t have the same results in assimilating the topic.
Writing down what you’ve learned by hand is a powerful memorization technique –– in some cases, when you get to the quiz with a particular question, you’ll even remember where on the sheet you wrote the answer. In this sense, it is worth transposing the information to this space in the way you understood it, with your words.
7. Make lists or topics
Some people like to make summaries in plain text, according to what they understand about the matter. If you invest in this format and it works, try putting some information in lists and topics. This is a technique that helps mainly in the review period when it is necessary to reinforce what was learned.
The information that way is more visible: you glance and you can already find the keyword you are looking for and, consequently, the explanation for the subject. Imagine that, during studies, it is necessary to go back to a certain part to better understand the sequence. It’s much easier to find in topics and lists than in blocks of text, don’t you agree?
8. Read again
The summary did, is it time to close the materials and go to the well-deserved rest? Not yet! With a maximum of 10 minutes, you can enhance your learning by rereading what you wrote during this time of dedication. This helps you better assimilate information and memorize it –– rather than just memorizing it.
This last reading can also help to identify grammatical errors, for example. This is extra training for writing the entrance exams and even for your academic life, in which the writing of articles will be frequent. Not to mention the opportunity to find points of improvement for your next summaries.
Read more about the topic here.
Closing
Keep in mind that, in the beginning, questions may arise about the steps of how to make a summary. But, over time, you gain experience and start writing almost with your eyes closed. The importance of training is there! The more you invest in this practice in all subjects, the better your summaries will be.
