Question

Read the passage below, taken from History and Geography 7, Unit 6. Write a summary of the passage. Your work should be approximately one-third the length of the original. When you have carefully checked your summary using the "Summary Checking Guidelines," send the summary to your teacher. Archaeologists have found that people lived on the North American continent many years ago--long before all the glaciers had melted from this land. Many archaeologists think these people came to this land by crossing the Bering Strait between Asia and Alaska. Only fifty-six miles lie between the two great land masses. The greatest distance between the tiny islands that lie between the land masses is only twenty-five miles, making a crossing at that point possible. Although no one knows exactly how and when the earliest settlers came to North America, the reason why they came is known--they came to find food. As nomads, the early inhabitants of North America were accustomed to moving from place to place in search of food for their large herds of animals. During the winter these nomads would set up camps and waited for spring before moving on. In the spring and summer they would lead their herds to good grazing land. Eventually, these people crossed over from Asia onto the North American continent. They migrated as far as the east coast and as far south as the tip of South America. Artifacts from this era show that the tools people used were intended for hunting animals, including the mammoth, the ground sloth, the tapir, the caribou, and the bison. The nomads depended upon these animals for both food and clothing. (Adapted from "Native Americans." History and Geography 7.Alpha-Omega Publications, 1999.) A review of the Summary Checking Guidelines are as follows: Does the topic sentence include the main idea? Is the summary clear and concise? Is the summary about one-fourth or one-third the length of the original? Does it express the author's ideas and not a private interpretation?

Answer 1

Apart from the guiding questions provided in the passage, below are some steps to make a good summary:

- Eliminate non-vital information.
- Join sentences with related ideas.
- Re-organize ideas to improve sentence fluency.

Taking these into consideration, here is an example summary from the passage taken from History and Geography 7, Unit 6. 

Archaeologists discovered that people came to the North American continent long ago possibly by crossing fifty-six miles between Asia and Alaska. While the date and details of their trip remain unknown, as nomads, they migrated during the spring and summer in search of food for their herds and camped during the winter. Eventually, they settled from the east coast to the tip of South America. Artifacts found from this era were used for hunting animals to get food and clothing.