I may have time for nothing but examples here today, so I will embrace the idea that the most effective way to teach purposeful summary is by example.

Mock Summary (Tofu Chicken)

• The author uses “tells about” and “talks about” language instead of relating actual claims.
• The author feels compelled to briefly mention all the themes of the essay whether or not they relate to a central point.
• The “summary” can only really be understood by someone who has read the essay since the explanations don’t supply their own background.

In his essay, “The Island of Stone Money,” Milton Friedman tells about the island of Yap in Micronesia and about how William Furness wrote a book about the people of Yap (who are also called the Yap) and their customs, especially about what they use for money.

It’s very interesting that they didn’t have any metal on Yap, so they made their coins out of stones they quarried from a distant island. We find their system of using big stones foolish because of the way the stones don’t even have to move from the front of their houses. There are even wealthy people who have never seen the stones they own.

The Germans once forced the Yap to build roads by painting crosses on their fei, similar to how the Americans moved gold in an underground vault to make it the property of the French instead of sending the gold to France. This almost ruined the American banking system.

So is our system really more advanced than the Yap’s stone money when you consider that we never see a lot of our own money but we believe in it anyway. I think it depends on what culture you’re brought up in which system you think sounds foolish.

Nuggets (Bits of Processed Chicken Meat)

• The author chooses one or more specific themes to summarize.
• The summary contains both more than it needs and less: too many details irrelevant to any argument; too little focus on serving an argument

In “The Island of Stone Money,” Milton Friedman illustrates the symbolic nature of money with a story about defaced coins. The coins on the island of Yap were massive, some as big as a car, and were formed of limestone quarried, shaped, and polished on a distant island and transported to Yap at great expense by those who could afford the excursion. The stones didn’t have to move once they were placed in front of their owners’ houses, since “ownership” could be transferred by tacit agreement that did not require transportation of the physical object. The stones were undeniably physical, but their value was not intrinsic in their usefulness; in fact, they were useless as anything but symbols of wealth. In fact, one family was considered wealthy even though their massive fei (as the stones were called) had been lost at sea and never seen by most Yap. When the Germans wanted to force the Yap to build roads, they painted black crosses on some prominent fei and made the Yap start the construction. When the roads were finished, they erased the marks and everything got back to normal.

The Whole Bird

• The author relates the specific claims made by the source that support the author’s argument
• No more or less of the original material is summarized than necessary to illustrate a specific claim

In “The Island of Stone Money,” Milton Friedman illustrates the symbolic nature of money with a story about defaced coins. The Germans bought Yap from Spain and found that it had no roads. Having little power to induce the Yap build roads for them, and not wanting to incur the cost themselves, the Germans found a symbolic way to make the Yap feel the pain of not complying. They imposed fines by painting stones. Huge limestone disks called fei served as symbols of wealth for the Yap, who could buy entire farms by transferring a big enough fei, in name only—the stones could stay in place—from one Yap to another. When the Germans, recognizing that the fei were potent symbols of well-being, painted big black crosses on some prominent fei, “claiming them” for the German government and taking them out of “circulation,” the Yap felt impoverished, and quickly built roads to earn the right to have their fei returned, by the merest act of erasing the crosses.