Learning is a process that all of us are going through in some shape or form. Some people tend to believe that learning is limited to school/college and that once you are in your adult life there is no more learning to be done. That is incorrect. You can always learn something new, and you should if you want to be successful.
Today, we are going to look at what is effective learning and how to do it. Effective learning is basically a synonym for the term “work smarter, not harder”. You see, in this day and age, nobody has time to read books from cover to cover or watch long tutorials to learn a new skill.
That’s why employing effective learning methods that are time-efficient and provide you with the maximum amount of knowledge is used. Today, we are going to learn about one of these methods.
Summarizing and Effective Learning
This method is called summarizing. Summarizing is the act of condensing information so that only the important points remain and everything unnecessary is removed. So, why is summarizing such an effective method for learning?
Well, that can be answered by the following list of benefits of summarizing for learning.
- It is time efficient. People can learn the gist of the matter in a shorter amount of time without having to wrestle with unnecessary details
- It improves comprehension because there is less clutter
- Helps with long-term retention because smaller things are easier to remember
Such are the benefits of summarizing texts for learning. The best students in school and college are not those who can memorize their textbooks, they are the ones who can internalize the information and apply it to different areas. That requires understanding as well as long-term retention both of which are improved with summarization.
How to Summarize Any Text
Now, let’s see how you can summarize text and promote effective learning.
- Read the Text Thoroughly
To summarize any kind of text be it an essay, an article, or a book chapter, you need to read it thoroughly first. Read the content to just get a feel for it. You are not supposed to try and understand it right now. If you do understand something great but don’t worry if you feel as if the content is flying over your head.
The point of this read-through is to create a mental roadmap i.e., understanding the flow of logic. Which topic was discussed first, what followed it, and what preceded it? This is what you need to identify first.
You can read the text multiple times if you wish, but one solid read-through is usually good enough.
- Segment the Text into Sections
Now, you need to break down the text into its sections. You see most types of writing follow this flow where they introduce a concept, discuss its broad strokes, and then further discuss its finer details. This is done via headings and sub-headings.
Your job is to segment the text you want to summarize into those headings and subheadings. Normally, this is not required as most write-ups of the academic variety are segmented already. However, if you are reading something like an article or a blog post, then you will have to segment everything yourself.
One easy method of doing this is to look at the text in the form of paragraphs. Just check what subtopic each paragraph is discussing and segment the similar ones under one heading. If the text is written correctly, you won’t run into any kind of problems.
- Recognize and Extract the Key Points of Each Section
This is where summarization begins in earnest. Now, you have to all the content under each segment individually. This is the easy way of summarizing because it does not require you to keep the entire text in context. You can simply look at the heading and determine its key points.
Finding the key points is easy as long as you ask these five questions:
- Who or what is being discussed?
- When does something happen?
- Where does it happen?
- Why does it happen, i.e., what is the reason or explanation?
- Is any methodology or theoretical information discussed?
Just by asking these questions, you can understand what the key points of the section are. You should extract these key points as these are what will help you create the summary.
- Write the Summary Using the Key Points
Summaries are of two types: Abstractive and Extractive. An abstractive summary is one where the information is paraphrased and put in the writer’s own words rather than using the same words and phrases as the source.
An extractive summary is one where the same words, phrases, and sentences used in the source material are reused to create the summary.
We recommend creating an abstractive summary because that is more intellectually engaging and bolsters long-term retention. Using the key points you have extracted in the previous step, create the summary. You can use them as is for an extractive summary or rewrite them in your own words for an abstractive one. The choice is yours.
- Proofread
Finally, just proofread the summary to ensure that you have indeed captured the correct key points and that there are no issues.
Some issues that can crop up in summaries are grammatical, i.e., bad spelling, typos, or inconsistent tense usage. Other issues that can crop up are related to the text and the key points.
It is possible that you may have added some extra information or omitted some important information. To find that out, read the summary and reread the source material one after the other.
That way you will be able to find any issues in your summary and correct them.
Alternate Method of Creating a Masterful Summary
The method that we just discussed was for creating summaries manually. There is another method, one that utilizes technology to make the process far easier. In this method, we utilize online tools to create a summary.
It involves going online and looking for a summarizing tool. There are many free tools available online. Our advice is to pick a tool from the first page of the results, preferably one in the top five.
Once you have selected a text summarizer, you should input the text you want to learn into it. Now, most summarizers have a slider for changing the length of the output. Adjust this length. Our suggestion is to use the medium setting or stick to the 40%-60% range. That way you will get a good summary. Of course, at the end of it all, you have to confirm that you want to summarize the work.
Soon after, the text summarizer will give you an output that looks somewhat like this:
Now, you should proofread the output to see if it has any issues (just in case) and you are done. Simply copy or download the summary and save it in a digital notepad.
The use of tools is great because they are powered by AI. This means that their results are better than ever and more accurate. Most of the time you can use the output of a text summarizer as is without having to change anything.
Conclusion
So, that ends our article. In this article, we learned how summarizing can help with effective learning and we learned how to summarize a text step by step.
We also taught you an alternate method where you can use a text summarizer tool to create the summary. This method is automatic and it has great results.
Now, you should be able to summarize text on your own and improve your learning.