Academic Writing: Why You Need to Learn How to Summarize and Paraphrase Text/Articles

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Summarizing:

When writing academic papers, you will often need to condense the text of articles and books written by noted writers and researchers in your field. Often, a source may offer important information but may be a somewhat minor source for your paper.

Also, in all fields of study, most formal academic papers present a section called “Review of the Literature” or “Literature Review,” which presents one or two sentence summaries of the sources referenced in the paper.

Paraphrasing:

When writing academic papers, you will need to present the ideas formulated and research conducted by noted writers and researchers in your field, but in your own words and incorporating your own unique sentence structure and syntax.

Techniques You Will Use in Writing Academic Papers
Paraphrased text:

Use when the original writer’s research and ideas are important and integral to your paper, but the original wording of the text is undistinguished.

Summary:

Use for a minor source that strengthens a major source’s premise or adds another dimension to it, but is not relevant enough to warrant a full paraphrase or quotation.

Direct quotations:

Use when the quotation itself is so distinguished that rendering the text into a paraphrase would diminish its quality greatly. Do note that most academic text, even from noted writers and researchers, is mundane and should be paraphrased.

Inferences:

The ideas, concepts, and interpretations that the student takes away from the experts who have been quoted, paraphrased, and summarized in the paper. This technique reveals the depth of a student’s critical thinking skills because it demonstrates that he/she, as a researcher, is capable of more than just parroting someone else’s ideas.

Student’s own opinion:

The student offers his/her opinion on the topic, which has been supported by his/her sources as solid evidence. Usually, the student’s opinion (overtly stated or implied) has been stated in the thesis sentence and restated (in different words and more forcefully) in the conclusion.

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