The truth about summaries of literary works from the Internet.

02.12.2019

Is the research worth it?

Your assignment for English literature is:

Write a summary about The Canterbury Tales

For any reasons you don't quite feel like doing it. Perhaps you can  just copy and adapt a summary from the internet?

Let's see if it is worth it!

First of all, launch the research, narrow it down, choose your keywords carefully...

Hold your horses. Slow down! 

I made a little bit of a research for you last night. I'll provide you with the results of 3 Google different searches for summaries about The Canterbury Tale, Frankenstein and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. You can now compare the various sites and the summaries they propose.

I found out tons of pages for the query "summary of the canterbury tales".

In the table below, you'll discover 6 fantastic resources and some surprises.

Since I am a high school teacher in an Italian school, I did a Google search in Italian as well, using the following keywords: "riassunti in inglese canterbury tales". I expected a more suitable outcome for an Italian audience, and it was indeed:

The tables below illustrate the results of two other searches:

this time the keywords were: " summary of Frankenstein".

Tons of material were provided but for obvious reasons I chose to read the first page only:

The last keywords I googled were "summary of the rime of the ancient mariner". Read the result below.

 As you can easily see, the summaries provided are all awesome. Many summaries are quite thorough and detailed. It takes a long time to juggle among the texts offered and a great effort to stay focused on the task. I do not think any of the summaries from Google first page would satisfy the needs of a b2 level Italian student though.

That is why Lnt has a 'modest proposal' for you:

a step by step method to write your summaries all on your own.

Go to the section

How to...make an effective summary