One of the main writing skills you will need to use is summary writing. A summary is a statement of the most important information in a text in your own words. After you have read a passage that you think is relevant to your topic, and decided that you want to use the information, you should stop looking at the text for a moment. If you wait for a minute or so before trying to rewrite the main ideas of a passage, there is much less chance of you using words that are too similar to the original (i.e. plagiarizing it).
You should use many fewer words in a summary than are found in the original source (maybe 15-20%) because, generally speaking, the aim is to combine several ideas into one or two sentences. There is no need to cite the author when you write a summary. For more in depth discussion about summary writing, and some useful practice exercises, check the "Summary writing" link (to the right).
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