Article Summary
Description:
An article summary is a first step towards writing a literature review, which is a critical analysis of published literature in a given field. Literature reviews often appear in proposals, journal articles, or graduate school theses and dissertations.
Before you start evaluating an article, you should summarize it correctly. In summarizing technical articles, make sure you know the author’s goals, methods, results, conclusions, and recommendations. This information should be clearly stated in the relevant headings and in the abstract. Then, think about the article critically. As a first step, look at follow-up letters to the journal editor, or later citations of the article: how have other researchers responded to it?
Summarizing and evaluating non-technical articles is often less straight-forward. Read for the author’s goals, conclusions, and means of reaching those conclusions. Think carefully about what words the author chose, particularly in the introduction and conclusion. Think about the author’s rhetorical methods, such as appeals to emotion, appeals to other sources, and appeals to logic (or logical fallacies).
In ChE 333T, your article summary should include a paragraph evaluating the source. If you are writing the article summary to prepare for a literature review, you should briefly discuss how you will use the article.
Format:
Each article summary comprises
(1) a heading, naming the source,
(2) 1-2 paragraphs, summarizing and paraphrasing from the source, using at least one direct quotation,
(3) a final paragraph, evaluating the source, and
(4) the complete reference on the “References” page. You should be able to generate the complete reference from “NoodleBib,” which is on the UT Library website.
Length:
Each article summary should be 300-350 words.