Are you wondering why is summarizing important? Keep reading!

Writing down the summarizing points at the end of your study notes is a great technique to help review and retain what you have learned so far.

Just like how teachers add a summary at the end of their lecture, compiling the important points of your study notes helps boost memorization.

What is a Summary?

A summary is one of the study techniques that help the students draw up a conclusion about what they have studied so far.

For example, if students make study notes on a particular topic, they can compile the main points that need to be emphasized at the end in the form of a summary. This way, the student can have the important points related to the topic in one place.

However, the summary must be done in a specific way. Therefore, you must use specific procedures to ensure that the abstract is a summary and not just a copy of the text. A summary should be written after reviewing the full text for it to be efficient. If, while writing the summary, you come across a point that you are unable to write up in your own words, then review that part of the text again.

Selecting the key ideas that you have learned and want to remember is the first thing to bear in mind when writing a summary. It makes no sense to imitate someone else's work while writing a summary because it will cloud your understanding of the subject and your level of knowledge.

But why is summarizing important? You can understand the value of summarizing after you go through its benefits.

5 Key Benefits of Summarizing

Making a summary at the end of your study notes is a great technique. It can help you later whenever you need to revise your notes but do not have the time to go through the entire text. Just reading through the summarizing points is good enough.

Writing a summary may take up time, but once you have a grasp of how it should be written, it can be of great help to you. So that you know all the good things that summaries offer you, don't miss out on their advantages. Following are the major reasons why is summarizing important.

Greater Synthesis Capacity

Visual aids play a great role in boosting memorization. Similarly, drawing up diagrams and flowcharts is a great way to summarize the topic. This will help you to have a good capacity for synthesis. Use different colors or text sizes to emphasize the importance of need-to-know points and good-to-know points.

Topic Revision

This is an important advantage of summarizing a text. If you have written down all the important points related to the topic in a coherent manner, there is no need to look through the entire text again and again for revision.

As mentioned before, adding diagrams and summaries can help you review the text whenever you need to revise the text, for example, just before a presentation or an exam.

Understand the Concepts

Once you have written down a good fluent, and coherent summary in your own words, it will become easier to review the topic and even memorize it. Furthermore, the ideas you already understand will be retained in your mind more firmly. By doing this, you will encourage both memorization and comprehension of the material.

Content Structuring

One of the benefits of making a habit of writing a summary is that you will get a better idea of how the text is structured. You can change the order of the text in your summary to make it more logical or coherent according to your understanding.

This structuring ability is also crucial for passing an exam. As it will enable you to write the essential responses to the listed questions in an orderly and coherent manner, you will be able to pass your exams and tests with flying colors.

Better Fluency

Writing the summarizing points in your own words from your own understanding can be of great help. It can help you boost your vocabulary and give you the confidence you need to efficiently explain the material you have studied about. 

Remember copying the same sentences from a book or other sources to draw up a summary is inefficient. It will not help you retain the knowledge you have gained so far. Writing it in your own words can help you in memorizing the important points more easily.

Conclusion

Now that you are familiar with the reasons why is summarizing important, you should definitely focus on making summaries. In order to write a good summary, make sure you have underlined and highlighted the important points in the text. You can also write the summary in a separate notebook or on paper while going through the text. This way, you can write up the main ideas from the text and make an outline of the summary.