Interview Summary

Write a summary for each interview, whether it is transcribed or not. Interview summaries will quickly show people about the topic of the interview. Writing summaries is an important literacy skill for your group members to acquire. But it takes practice to be able to identify main points and write a summary.

Here are some suggestions for how to teach learners to do summaries:²

What is a summary?

A summary is a shorter, concise version of an original text. It includes the main idea of the original text and some important supporting information or details.

• Model the summarizing process more than once, thinking out loud as you demonstrate it.
• Provide guided practice with the learners.
• Go through the process several times as a group with different materials.
• Provide feedback.
• Break into smaller chunks – don’t start with a summary of a complete interview. Begin with summarizing a short conversation, a small section of an interview, short radio or TV interviews or written paragraphs.
• Identify good summaries from a variety of examples.
• Practise evaluating summaries – including the learners’ own summaries after they have some experience.

Here are some guidelines you could give to the learners:

• Underline or highlight important words in the original text.
• Find the main idea of the text and a few important details that support it.
• Write in complete sentences.
• Delete repeated information.
• Delete unimportant information.
• Combine ideas with the same subject.
• Think of a category to replace lists of details eg. Sea mammals for a list including seals, belugas and narwhales.
• Remove details that are not about the main subject.
• Restate in fewer words.
• Do not include personal opinions.

The following web sites contain information on writing summaries:

• http://www.turnerfenton.com/departme/English/strategies.htm
• http://www.eqao.com/pdf_e/02/02p018e.pdf
• http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/Justice/Web page/Summary/

2. Adapted from Teaching the Language Arts by Cathy Collins Block, published by Allyn and Bacon, in 2001. Also from Reading Instruction that Makes Sense by Mary Tarasoff, published by Active Learning Institute, 2001, available through Grass Roots Press.