Summary building is an important part of understanding a language. Even natural-born English speakers might be in a situation where they don't understand every word and do not know entirely what is being said. Summary skills are important because students take the pieces that they do know to create a picture of the whole, even if some of the details are not as clear as they should be. Patty Middleton, ESL teacher in St. Paul, MN, suggests several summary building skills exercises that you can do with your ESL students.

Reading Summary
Encourage better summary skills by doing reading summary exercises. Have students read a passage, either to themselves or aloud in a group. Then have the students relate to you what they have heard. Students should write up a summary for what they have read and should then tell you, in their own words, what the summary is. Emphasize that a summary should include all of the main points of the passage and should also include as many details as they have understood. However, the summary should not copy the passage word for word. Middleton says as students advance, you should asked them to do the summary without having a copy of the passage in front of them.

Watching Summary
Do watching summary activities with your ESL students. They can do these exercise after watching a television show, a skit or a play. Have them get together in a group with other students and talk about what they have just seen. They should discuss the main points of what they have seen, and you can encourage them to present this information in a variety of different ways to you and the rest of the class. This is an important way of making sure that students understand what they have witnessed and can repeat it back to you.

Story Summary
Have students come up with a story that they can tell themselves. They should write out this story, which will help them come up with written grammar and story skills like having a beginning, middle and end to their plots. It will also help them with summary as when they are finished with their stories, they need to create a short summary that they can share with the rest of the class. Read the story yourself and see if the summary the student has written is done correctly. Be sure to correct them if they're missing parts of the summary.