In an article summary, your job is to write about the article, not about the actual topic of the article.

The most common problem that students have when writing an article summary is that they misunderstand the goal of the assignment. Political Studies, Biology, or Anthropology). Professors ask you to write article summaries to help you to develop essential skills in critical reading, summarizing, and clear, organized writing. Furthermore, an article summary requires you to read a scholarly article quite closely, which provides a useful introduction to the conventions of writing in your discipline (e.g. For argumentative articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the thesis and supporting arguments for empirical articles, the summary identifies, explains, and analyses the research questions, methods, findings, and implications of the study.Īlthough article summaries are often short and rarely account for a large portion of your grade, they are a strong indicator of your reading and writing skills. An article summary is a short, focused paper about one scholarly article that is informed by a critical reading of that article.

Science article with summary