Lesson 8 | Sub-Point Summaries

Why Summarize?

Beginning at this lesson, we turn our focus on the art of summarizing as a way of arriving at a main point. To understand the value of summarizing, I'm going to set aside the detective metaphor for just a moment and invite you on a journey into a personal experience of mine. Join me as I recount the unique process of learning a new city.


A few years ago, my family and I had a wonderful opportunity to live in Toronto, Canada, for three months. We stayed in an apartment just a few blocks from the heart of downtown. For a guy who has always lived in rural communities, landing in the center of a city of 2.8 million people and a metropolitan region of nearly 6 million was more than a little daunting. The biggest surprise to me was the wonderful simplicity of our lifestyle there. One mark of this simplicity was in our transportation. For the most part, we left the car parked in the ramp below the apartment and either walked or used public transportation.
Toronto has a great system of subways, buses, and streetcars. Yet for us, in the first few days, it all seemed overwhelming. The King Street subway station was an easy walk from our apartment. The first time I went into the station, I’m sure I had that dazed and confused ‘newbie’ look on my face. That persisted until I sat down with a map and a smartphone app and began to understand the when-and-where details of the system.


What helped most was to get a simplified big picture view of the two main train lines: Line 1, running north-south on either side of the downtown core and Line 2, running east-west at the north end of town. Identifying the key stations on each line was important too—such as the stations where the two lines linked together.


This big picture summary not only clarified matters for me, but I was also able to use it to help my family understand. As the days went on, we all got very comfortable making our way through the subway.
But that was not the end of the learning process! The next step was to do the same with the streetcar system… and the buses. Having done that, I was able to connect the big picture of each piece to get a view of the whole. But that was only the beginning— next we had to master the maps of driving roads, bike-routes, trails, sidewalks, short cuts, downtown scooter rental routes, and so on, so that we might know the best way to travel to any point of the city.


Building to the Big Picture
A sub-point summary concisely captures the primary point of a group of propositions, leaving out most supporting details—much like how I learned the big picture of the subway system by focusing on the map's overall shape and major intersections while setting aside the finer details.
The process advances as you compile various sub-point summaries for different portions of the passage, as I did with buses and streetcars.
As you combine summary to summary, you build the logic of your arc/bracket level upon level, connecting dots like I did between public transportation, driving roads, bike-routes, etc.
But as I zoom out, attempting to get a broader picture, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold all the details—the stations, road names, and subway numbers—in my mind. I must, therefore, set aside details in order to make the broadest connections. That's exactly how it works with summaries! You'll set aside smaller details of Scripture—prepositional phrases, adjectives, and supporting clauses—and grab just the primary points of the text.
Finally, you can succinctly summarize to the reader the main point of the whole passage, proving the relationships you have chosen in the arc/bracket, just as the long time Toronto resident can succinctly explain the entire city's transportation system in a few short sentences, proving that he understands it thouroughly.
Hard Work!
As you might imagine, summarizing (like paraphrasing) can be hard mental work. But it is worth the effort. I offer three reasons why you should summarize.
As with paraphrasing, your ability to accurately summarize is a good test for determining whether or not you fully grasp the meaning of a passage.
Summarizing is also a great tool for communicating the meaning to others. If you are able to clearly state the main point of a passage, your listeners will have a much greater chance of understanding as well.
Summarizing paragraph or chapter-sized divisions will significantly help in tracing the author’s argument through a whole text. A summary brings the main point to the surface, clear of the details, so that you can keep your focus on the main point of each section and work to discern the links that bring them together.