The purpose of this research is to discover some textual patterns across spoken summaries and to compare them with those of written summaries. Using the top-down approach, the study has analyzed the discourse strategies in one hundred spoken summaries spontaneously produced by native speakers of English in radio podcasts on human interest problems. The analysis has revealed five discourse strategies which speakers follow to provide a clear overview of the problem under discussion: a personal emotional evaluation supported by some evidence; sharing a common opinion on the problem and offering some personal supporting evidence; presenting the essence of a problem through a classification; contradicting a common opinion or finding a compromise between the common and the personal opinion; using an adage to summarize a situation in a laconic way. Each strategy is presented as a few moves marked by special lexical-syntactic constructions. Intonation and syntax do not play a considerable role in strategy differentiation, but they organize summaries according to the norms of spoken language. Spoken summaries also tend to differ from written ones in having more variety in their discourse structure, although the movement from main points to supporting evidence is common to both types. The research contributes to the description of the genres of spoken language. The study also has a pedagogical implication presenting summaries as useful material for developing speaking skills. Being aware of discourse strategies and move markers, learners can follow the summary models and improve their fluency in English as a foreign language.