Writing summaries for Guest Lectures.

Writing a summary is an important academic skill. The strict word limit of a summary makes it necessary to make selections and decisions which require a thorough knowledge and understanding of the topic at hand: Only the most important and relevant aspects of the talk will be represented in the summary, and the summary's author first has to identify those. As a consequence, it requires more reflection and a deeper understanding to write 200 words than to write 1000.

In addition, the length constraint forces the author to think carefully about the words used and the grammatical structures employed. Unreflected writing wastes words and makes it difficult to complete the task effectively.


If you want to know more about writing summaries, you could try