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In order to think critically about a text you must be able to read it and then summarize it, at least in your head. Summary is one way other peoples’ perspectives enter and inform our own writing. Critical writing includes summary to show readers how the writer’s contribution will add to the ongoing conversation about the topic. One of the goals of English 101 is to help you “situate your perspective” in your essays. That means you need to show how your idea fits in, adds to, or challenges what others have said on the subject you are writing about. Your are to compose a summary (also known in academic writing as an abstract) : A summary is a condensed report of a text or speech. Although summary is not the same thing as analysis, summarizing involves a process of both analysis and translation. To write an effective summary, you have to determine what parts of text or speech are important and then determine how the parts connect or fit together. The ability to accurately summarize another person’s ideas in your own words is good intellectual and ethical practice. It is not simply a mechanical task, but a tool for understanding. To summarize, we must first try to comprehend another person’s position or point of view, regardless of what we may think. Keep in mind: – A summary usually has little or no quoting from the original essay. – A summary has no evaluative comments; it is not a critique of content or style; it does not involve any of your own opinion, inference, or interpretation. – A summary presents the essay in your own sentences, but other than the thesis it should not paraphrase the whole essay by writing the same sentences using different words. In a paraphrase — which comes later in a whole e

ssay you write about a text — you try to capture the entire content and flavor of the text, and because your aim is to support a point being thorough and fair, a paraphrase may actually be longer than the original. But in a summary, you reduce the material to its essential gist. A summary usually preserves the general order of the original text but is always much shorter. The rubric used to assess this assignment will include the following elements… YOUR FIRST SENTENCE should contain the following rhetorical information: • name of author • title of text • where and when it was published, if applicable • distillation of the text’s main idea YOUR SUMMARY SHOULD: -conform to MLA standards for a heading and title, etc. (if you know — if not, we’ll go over this in class – not to worry!) and be about a page or so: no longer than a page and a half -should have one-three unified, coherent paragraphs -use no more than ONE short quotation (with appropriate MLA in-text citation) – represent the article fairly and accurately provide even and balanced coverage of ideas – use words economically -be completely neutral and not reveal your bias in any way -use citation, and attributive tags to represent and synthesize main ideas – pull back the camera lens to reflect an overall view of the whole piece while avoiding unnecessary and overwhelming details Assignment Goals/Outcomes distinguish between main and subordinate points • provide even coverage of a text • convey clearly the main ideas of a complex text within a specific word limit use attributive tags and other tools to distinguish the writer’s ideas from your own • use MLA citation format • use words economically • represent the essay fairly and accurately