Summarizing Arguments
Purpose :
To condense an author's argument into a short, accessible format
Audience:
Me and your classmates
Length:
150-200 words (around 3/4 page typed, double spaced)
Grammar focus:
Tenses and subject/verb agreement
Content focus:
Finding main ideas, avoiding plagiarism
Due:
TBA
For the next three class meetings, we will be focusing on reading and understanding
written arguments. You should already have some idea of how to do
this, since you probably spent a fair amount of time reading and discussing
texts in your high school English classes. You also have just completed
the advertising essay for this course, which involves some of the same
skills. Whether you're reading an advertisement, a story, an editorial,
or even a poem, you're engaged in the same activity: trying to comprehend
what the writer is saying.
Comprehension,
therefore, is the main focus for this assignment. Here are
several short editorials.
I'd like you to skim all of them, but choose ONLY ONE to focus
on. Choose the one that most appeals to you and that you understand
the best. You may want to read that one several times before
you start summarizing it.
Writing a summary
is similar to the little book reports you may have done in sixth or seventh
grade. This time, though, you're going to be working with a much
shorter piece of writing, and the main goal is for you to find the author's
key points. Once you've found them, the trick is to be able to restate
them in your own words so that you can avoid plagiarism. It's really
important to include in quotation marks any phrase or sentence that comes
directly from the article.
Don't worry if
you end up accidentally plagiarizing something during your first draft.
Almost all students end up using some sentence or group of words from the
article the first time they write their summaries without realizing that
they've done this. That's okay, and that's why I'm here. Once you've
written your summaries, before you even turn them in, I'll meet with each
of you individually to point out those places, if they exist. Of
course, you all may surprise me yet again and really catch onto this the
first time.
Besides the plagiarism
issue, the other pitfall that students sometimes fall into during this
assignment is putting their opinion of what the author is saying into the
summary. Just remember that you aren't criticizing or analyzing
the writer's argument this time. You're merely reporting back what
he or she said, in fewer words than the original. If, after reading
this and hearing my spiel in class, you're still not quite sure what to
do, click here for some hints about how to get started
on a summary. Also feel free to use the checklist
I always use when I'm writing summaries.