Finish your term paper. In order to write an effective summary, it is necessary to have achieved all of the results of your research, and that cannot be established until the term paper is complete. Although some abstracts do exist for works in progress, this is more common in long-term research that spans many months or years.
Identify the purpose, methodology, findings, conclusions and implications of your research. Write a few sentences or a paragraph about each of these so you are able to get them clear in your own mind. If you wrote a term paper about winter hats, for example, you can identify that your purpose was to establish what was the most popular style of winter hat on campus. Your methodology was to observe and record all hats worn during a certain time span on campus. Your findings were that one particular style of hat was worn by the greatest number of people. Your conclusion was that the style of hat worn by the greatest number of people was the most popular style of winter hat on campus. Your implications may be that the particular style of hat would be a popular item if it were for sale in the campus bookstore.
Pare down the elements of your abstract into a summary of no more than 125 to 200 words. Eliminate any extraneous information. In our hats example, we would exclude such details as the list of different styles and colors that were in evidence during the observation phase, the weather that may have influenced the style of hat worn or the fact that the population of students on campus on a certain observation day was low due to traffic issues.
Review the abstract and compare it to samples given by your instructor or by your university's writing center.