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Secondary Source Summary (SSS)

The Secondary Source Summary (SSS) is an assessment where a student selects a scholarly work (e.g., journal article, book chapter) on a topic covered in this course and summarizes the contents of that secondary source. In what follows, I’ll explain how to complete the SSS in three simple steps.

First, find a secondary source that relates to the topic you plan on investigating. This topic may be assigned to you by the instructor or may be a topic that relates to something you have covered in a class. You should download a copy of the reading or photocopy the chapter of the book you are using. There are several good places to find secondary sources:

  1. The reference page of articles or books you have already read
  2. Your institution’s library catalogue
  3. Google scholar
  4. Discipline-specific resources, e.g., philosophers use PhilPapers or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Second, you should skim the source and check to see if it is something you want to read. If it isn’t, find another source (back to step 1). If you’ve found something worth reading, quickly read the source. As you read, highlight or mark portions of the reading you think are important. In addition, identify the thesis of the source (it will usually be found at the begining of the reading or at the end). Don’t waste time rereading portions of the text that you don’t understand (you can always go back and read it slowly later).

Third, now that you’ve read the source, briefly summarize the reading in your own words. The goal is not to give a line-by-line summary of the source or even to understand the entire piece. Instead, it is to articulate the main point of the source, identify key points, and give an outline of the source’s structure. If you did step 2 correctly, then you’ll have highlighted several key points so you can go back to these highlighted portions and try to state (in your own words) the key points of the reading. In summarizing the source, you should do the following:

  1. cite the source you are using (put this at the top of the page after your name)
  2. state the main claim / thesis of the source
  3. indicate key points made throughout the source (a) list a set of points made throughout the paper (beginning, middle, end OR section 1, section 2, section 3, etc.) (b) be informative: explain the point with a sufficient amount of depth so that your reader would learn something from your summary
  4. give a sense of the structure / organization of the source

Basic Structure

Here is the basic structure of this assignment, but see the templates folder for a downloadable version: