Summary Assignment Resources

Summary Assignment

Summary Self-Evaluation

Below are some suggestions to an early summary assignment. If you feel you're struggling with the summary assignment, read through these again.

Summary Suggestions:

Before you post your first summaries, read through these suggestions and see if there are some things you might improve. As many as half of every class makes some large mistakes in writing their first summaries, and you might be asked to do it over if you're way off. Examples: Some students think that paraphrase is the same as summary, so they paraphrase the source instead of summarizing it. Others jumble up the order of ideas in the original source, or leave out a main idea or two.

So look over your summaries again before posting them. See if there are some improvements you might make. Even if you posted the summary already to D2L, you can either change it, or post a reply to the original summary, and show changes there.

Some things to watch for when you do your summaries and self-evaluations:

1. Inaccurate self-evaluation ratings:
Some students rate yourselves too high or too low in their self-evaluations.

Don't confuse self-evaluations with grading. If you hope for at least a "B" in this class, it won't help to give yourself all "4" ratings. Self-evaluations only help if they accuratly reflect how well you do in various areas, and when they're not accurate, they identify blind spots in your judgment that have to be addressed.
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2. Being concise:
Another way to look at the idea of being concise in a summary is to treat it like a contest with only two rules:

a. The winner has to include all the main points in the summary, without leaving any out.

b. The winner is the one who writes the shortest summary, using the lowest number of words, while not breaking rule a.
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3. Reading carefully before summarizing:
Some of those who summarize "building a house" may benefit from looking also at "two ways to improve your writing." Students often forget to deal enough with improving ideas and outline, so they read the house analogy to conform to some other understanding of the writing process, instead of reading it carefully for what it actually says.

So in other words, some summaries misinterpret the analogy of writing as compared to building a house. I mentioned in some blog posts that many first-year college students have not been taught to think enough about the strength of your ideas, and how well they're organized, and instead, have been taught to think too much about less important steps in the writing process.

Some students take those kinds of innacurate ideas about writing, and imposing them on their summaries of "building a house."

In this way, when you write a summary, you have to be careful that your summary is accurate and actually saying in a nutshell what the sourse said, and not imposing your own pre-existing understandings on the source.

Singers, poets and philosophers have observed that we often hear what we want to hear, instead of listening carefully and actually hearing what is being said. Listening carefully to the source is essential.
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4. Summarize while looking at the original text, not from memory.
This is an important point, and relates to #3 above: Don't read a source, close the book or click away from the web page, and then summarize from memory. That method will always be a bit more sloppy and inaccurate.

Instead, always have the source available right in front of you as you summarize.

As I say below in #7, sketch out a list or informal outline of the main ideas in the source, and use this as a map for your own summary.
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5. Proof-read carefully
Some students forget to proof-read your summaries very carefully. If you go back and read your sentences out loud, you might notice that words are missing, or that you started writing one sentence, but then seem to have changed your mind and finished as a different kind of sentence without revising or deleting parts of the sentence you'd started.

Even if editing isn't the most important step in good writing, you should not leave it out, just as a housing developer doesn't forget about siding, paint, and landscaping.
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6. Some students confuse "summary" with "paraphrase": to summarize is to state the main points brielfy, simply, in as few words as possible without missing any main ideas. A summary is always briefer than the original.

To paraphrase, on the other hand, is to restate the original in your own words.
This is sometimes short, or can be as long as the original, or even longer.

Some students find themselves paraphrasing instead of summarizing.
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7. Summaries usually mirror the structure of the original:
Many students organize their summaries in ways that are very different from the structure of the text you were summarizing. This is to be avoided.

Summaries usually follow the original structure more closely, and it's actually easier to write them that way. Look down the original and state the main points, in the original order, as briefly and to-the-point as possible. In preparation for writing a summary, it can be good to sketch out a list or informal outline that reflects the structure of the original.
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8. Don't forget to include self-evaluations in reply to your summary posts.
If you forget, look again at the course blog ( www.en100fried.blogspot.com ).
Look in the upper right at the right-hand sidebar menu, titled "where to find it."
Right under "summary assignment," you should see "summary self-eval." Click that.
Read the directions, and copy the part that begins in capital letters into a reply to your summary.

If this is unclear, ask for help from someone at the IT help desk in the basement of the library, or ask a classmate for help, or ask me next week.