Hi everyone—I apologize for the overload of information today! Here is a review of everything I covered regarding summary and paraphrase. We will work on this more later in the semester, so don’t feel like you need to know it all now. This is more of an introduction so you can start working on these skills.

SUMMARY

A SUMMARY is when you condense a substantial amount of material into a much smaller amount of material: a paragraph, usually, or even a sentence. Summaries are used when you don’t want to provide too many details, just a central idea.

• A summary does not need to begin with what the author first wrote.
• It will describe the overall gist of the piece followed by the major events. Summaries consist of the key points—not everything.
• Though summaries, like every piece of writing, have an intro, body, and conclusion, these sections are highly compacted. Typically, in a one paragraph summary, the first sentence is the intro AND the main argument/point of your summary. The sentences that follow each explain a key point of the book/essay.

When you are writing a summary:

• Make sure you understand the organization of the essay clearly
• Identify the thesis or purpose of the essay, topic sentences, and key points as you read.
• Ask yourself, “What is this essay about?”
• Reconstruct the argument as presented by the author as a list (sometimes, it helps do this first as a list).

*Remember: You are writing objectively about another writer’s words.

Click here to see strategies for writing a summary.
Click here to see three sample summaries for Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”, all of which are different lengths.

PARAPHRASE

 A PARAPHRASE is like a summary in that you put the ideas of others into your own words.

• While a summary reports what a source says in significantly fewer words than the original, a paraphrase retells the information of a source in approximately the same number of words, clinging much more closely to the intent and content of a particular line or passage.
• Be careful not to follow your source’s wording too closely as this will constitute plagiarism.

Click here to see examples of paraphrase and plagiarism to help understand the difference between the two.

 

Both summary and paraphrase are useful. It usually depends on how much detail you want to give. Just make sure you are putting it in your own words, and not retyping the author’s words.

 

QUOTATIONS

Any time you copy words directly from printed material, you must put them in QUOTATIONS and give the author credit by introducing and citing. You don’t want to quote everything—that can get really tedious for both writer and reader—but using direct quotations can be one of the best way to incorporate a source.

 

You should quote when…

 

• the language of the speaker is particularly vivid.
• you need to maintain technical accuracy.
• the exact words of a speaker are important.
• the speaker holds important authority.
• when you are discussing language itself, as in poetry or literature.

 

The most important thing to remember when using direct quotations, besides citing, is to integrate those quotations fluidly and gracefully into your paragraphs. You never, never want to just drop a quote down without introducing it. That’s where signal phrases come in handy.

 

Signal phrases include words like: according to, acknowledges, adds, admits, argues, asserts, believes, claims, comments, contends, insists, notes, observes, points out that, reasons, rejects, suggests, writes…

Examples:

• Though Orwell “did not want to shoot the elephant,” he ultimately does kill the animal because he was afraid of looking foolish in front of the Burmese (Orwell 85).
• Orwell claims, “I did not want to shoot the elephant” (Orwell 85).

More information for summary, paraphrasing, and quoting is available here.

 

 

HOMEWORK DUE THURSDAY, 3/12

1. Read David Sedaris “Remembering my Childhood on the Continent of Africa (RR 172) and post your reading response to OpenLab. Don’t forget to bring the story to class.

2. In addition, write a 150-200 word summary of Sedaris’ essay and post it to OpenLab. (Category: “Remembering My Childhood” Summary)

3. Observations and photos for Essay #2 due Tuesday, 3/17.