Writers often must summarize others' texts as part of their own work. To succeed at this, they must first read and understand new information and then transform that information to fulfill a specific purpose. Concept mapping, used as a visual organizing technique, can be an effective link between the two processes. In a preliminary study, students in an undergraduate technical writing class were given a three-part, paper-based module on summarizing texts. Each part introduced the concepts of metacognitive reading strategy (defining the task, monitoring understanding, mentally organizing the material), summarizing strategy (selecting material to include, formulating topic sentences, polishing one's paraphrase), and concept mapping. Students read and mapped three texts and wrote summaries of two of the texts. Students completed concept maps of the text before writing summaries, and as part of the mapping tactic, they were instructed to label the links between ideas. The three-part unit did function successfully as an instructional tool. The students who completed all three parts of the unit produced summaries that were well-organized and that transformed the original material by combining ideas across sentences and paragraphs. Used as an in-class exercise, however, the unit took enough class time that future trials may involve take-home exercises as well. (Contains 13 references.) (AEF)