How To Write a Literature Summary

The Literature Summary is meant to display comprehension of a scholarly article in a one page format. To do well in a summary you must fully understand what you have read and be able to explain the paper using your own words.

To prepare to write a successful summary:

1. Read the paper at least twice. Write down terms and phrases that are new and look up definitions.
2. As you are reading try to answer the following:
      a. What was the goal of the work?
      b. Did the researchers achieve this goal?
      c. What evidence was presented to convince you that the goal was achieved?
      d. What does the data mean? (try to answer this before reading the authors answer)
3. Take notes as you read in your own words. Summarize the main points of a paragraph instead of writing down a quote. Do not use complete sentences because you will be tempted to write a quote.
4. Continue to review the paper and read other supporting information (like definitions) until you can write a one or two sentence summary of the entire paper.

Before writing a first draft, you should be able to answer these questions about your paper without rereading the paper:

• Why was the study undertaken? (Check the Introduction and Discussion sections)
• What were the specific goals of the work? (One sentence per goal!)
• What experiments were done? (Identify what variables were changed and what was measured as a result)
• What prior work helped inform the researchers and shape what they did?
• What were the major findings?
• What was the most interesting part of the study?

Now you are prepared to write a first draft! Make sure to proof read the paper. You may send a draft to the instructor at least a week before it is due for feedback. Make sure you write in the past tense when talking about the work that was done (experiments).  Use the present tense to talk about findings, big picture ideas, or conclusions. Keep the paper under 600 words! Do NOT include a personal opinion. This is a summary, not a critique.

If you walked through the process of reading a summarizing above, you probably will not have a problem with unintentional plagiarism. Unintentional plagiarism happens when you still do not understand something well enough to use your own words instead of the words of the original author. Quotations are allowable, but should only be a very small part of the paper.

GTC Chemistry 1 Laboratory
Revised 8/2013