A Sense of Doubt blog post #1890 - Writing summaries in College English and Composition Courses

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1890 - Writing summaries in College English and Composition Courses

Welcome to my summary writing page.

First up, you will my main video on summarizing in college composition courses. I compared my approach to those of other teachers and that of a commonly used video by SMRT ENGLISH, also included below along with my notes.

I wrote a sample summary and have included that below as well along with the original article and blog links to where I originally published that article on this blog.

Original essay for the sample summary at the link below and recopied farther down in this blog entry:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1646 - 20 minutes into the future - anger is a commodity

The second video is specifically for ENGLISH 101 students and shares a walk through of the first article they are asked to summarize: "A Man Who Cooks" by Stephen Bauer.

If you have ventured here from the wilderness of the Internet via searching, please let me know if you find the videos helpful.

This request goes for my own students, too, though I am fairly certain the material IS helpful or I have not been paying attention to what my students think for many, many years.  ... that's a joke, son! :-)

Of course, as with making any videos, I thought of twelve ways to do these videos better, things I should have said, things I would cut, but like any work of this kind, there comes a time to present what's done, and that time is now.



For a copy of "A Man Who Cooks," people who are not my students will have to write me a message in the comments below. I have provided the articles as shown for my students.



Here's the video I played a snippet from to start the video on "A Man Who Cooks." I forgot to reference it. It's part of the mix:

 A Sense of Doubt blog post #1651 - Everybody Knows 2019 - Musical Monday for starting school - 1908.26.

MY NOTES FOR THE VIDEO ON SUMMARY WRITING

By definition, a summary is a shorter version of another piece of writing that captures the main ideas of the original.

Imagine starting with a pizza with everything, and then as you learn what people don’t want on their pizza, you remove items until your edited pizza contains the most essential items.

When I teach summary writing, I teach two types of summary:

- the stand alone summary

- the summary that would be included in an essay or a project

The difference in style between these two types is my personal preference in teaching students to focus on JUST THE CONTENT, JUST IDEAS at an objective distance in stand alone summaries without reference to the author or title of the original whereas these references would be given when including the summary in an essay.

For a stand alone summary, start by creating a title for the summary that contains the name of the author of the original, the title of the original, and your name as “summarized by.” Now, you will no longer reference any of that information in your text.

ESSENTIAL MESSAGE

The first sentence of a summary contains the single main idea of the original as a master or global summary to lead off your piece of writing.

- controlling ideas

- main idea

- literally what the words mean “the message that is essential”

- Get right to it - do not introduce the essential message. Just lead with it.

BODY OF THE SUMMARY

- Follow the essential message with all the key points and all the necessary detail in the same order as the original unless there’s a reason to deviate.

INDEPENDENT MEANING

- Paraphrase the original - some minor similarities

- NO QUOTING - no word-for-word

- NO ADDED - do not add content: it’s a summary not a reaction

- NO OPINION - as above, it’s a summary not a reaction

NO REFERENCE; NO CITES

- In stand alone summaries, I allow my students to complete the work without in text cites or end references, but if included in an essay, these citations would be required.

CONCISE

- duh

- Be brief but not TOO BRIEF

- Keep important details

- RETAIN ALL KEY IDEAS AND DETAILS

- what’s important?

THIRD PERSON ONLY

- no second person

- no first person

STAND ALONE VERSUS IN AN ESSAY

- A stand alone summary adheres to all these rules WITHOUT REFERENCE beyond the assignment’s title to the original article’s title or author; this is specifically MY WAY. Other instructors will want that context (author and title) in your first sentence.

- When including a summary in an essay, then it’s no longer a stand alone submission and so should follow all good essay composition rules, such as including author and title when introduced and cited appropriately.

Here’s this other guy’s video. It’s okay. But I differ on some concepts.

SUMMARY WRITING - 3:05

by Smrt English

Summaries serve a variety of purposes, even outside academia. From movie synopses to summarized class notes for an absent student, let alone the summary abstract of a long and difficult scholarly article, summary writing is a common task that needs to be mastered.

MOST IMPORTANT INFO

A summary needs to be clear to someone who hasn’t read the original, and so it must contain all the most necessary information to fully understand the content of the original.

- Include all the main points

- Do not go beyond the main points (don’t add content)

- Be brief - avoid details, dates, or figures UNLESS ESSENTIAL

MAINTAIN GOOD PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE

- Topic sentence

- Supporting sentences

- concluding sentence

THE STRUCTURE OF THE PARAGRAPH

REF? - First sentence (topic sentence) should identify the title and author of the original material

- Supporting sentences present the main points in order IF POSSIBLE

- Only re-arrange order if you have a good reason

HOW TO WRITE

- Paraphrase only

- No direct quotes (no copying and pasting)

BE OBJECTIVE

- Do not add your own opinion

THE SAMPLE DISCUSSED IN THE MAIN SUMMARY WRITING HOW TO VIDEO

Summary of “Outrage is the Business Model” by Daniel Harvey

Because anger motivates users to click and share posts virally more than happiness, social media networks like Facebook employ a business model to promote outrage producing material over other types of content.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google have made anger a commodity. Though Google has other sources of revenue, Facebook and Twitter make profits through advertising, which is very much a 20^th century model for revenue earning, proving that they have innovated in all ways except profit. All three companies started first by building audiences and contemplating business models later. These platforms need user eyeballs to make money. The more time spent interacting with content, the more ads users will see and maybe click on. The users who click ads less often will be shown more ads embedded in messages and stories as well as the core feed. The commercial junk jamming the once quirky web has turned it into an attention harvesting device. User attention is worth billions of dollars in advertising revenue and so platforms have become “data factories” or “attention merchants” to hold hostage for profit the greatest user commodity: attention span.

Facebook based its clickable reaction buttons on mid-20th Century junk science by psychologist Paul Ekman, even though Margaret Mead debunked his idea that all humans experience just six basic emotions. As tech companies strive to monetize user emotions, they limit user’s expressions. Yale neuroscientist Molly Crockett concluded that outrage drives viral post sharing more than any other emotion, proving to advertisers that more money is to be made in what makes users angry. To support this experience, social media platforms have made it easier for users to express anger, which users are more willing to do since fewer consequences for vitriol – like being punched – exist online. The experience is also more potent as users react with greater anger online than off and the emotion forms a cycle: outrage prompts more outrage, and users click more when they’re angry driving up profits.

Summary = 326 words

Original = 581 words

Original essay at the link below and recopied below the link:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1646 - 20 minutes into the future - anger is a commodity

Outrage is the business model

“We sell ads, senator.” The business model of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google is advertising. These companies have innovated everywhere but in their revenue streams. Advertising is very much a 20th century revenue model. What's more, out of those three companies, only Google has any other sources of profit.

Each company started by focusing on rapacious audience growth first. The business model was an afterthought. Something to graft on after the fact. As a result advertising has become an assumed default by VCs and other tech companies. Now it's the community that's the afterthought as ethical failure after another proves.

That business model is why they have North Star metrics like Daily Active Users. They need your eyeballs to make money. The more time you spend on their platforms means you’ll see more ads. God forbid, you might even accidentally click on one of the damn things. This is also why you see ads in more and more places: not only in the core feeds but in stories, messages, and more.

This is why our once quirky, random, charming web has devolved into one colossal attention harvesting mechanism. The Internet is chock full of “commercial junk” in the words of Tim Wu. At the centre of all this are “data factories” and “attention merchants” like Facebook and Twitter. They are all attempting to capture your most scarce resource — your attention — and take it hostage for money. Your captive attention is worth billions to them in advertising revenue.

Facebook's "reactions" are based on decades old junk science. American Psychologist Paul Ekman surmised that all humans, everywhere, experience and express the same six basic emotions in the same way. Margaret Mead’s anthropological studies debunked Ekman's theory with vim and vigor. But it’s simplicity makes it resilient and so it comes in and out of vogue with tech companies as they try to monetise around our emotions. The obvious downside is systems that only let us express ourselves with these limited emotions risk reinforcing them in a terrible self-fulfilling loop.

What's worse is the fact that some emotions are more equal — and more profitable — than others. Yale Neuroscientist Molly Crockett says outrage is what drives viral social media posts. Happy posts are a very distant second. “Anger is a gift” is a lyric to an old favourite song of mine from the 90s. Today it’s more truthful to say “anger is a commodity.”

Because of this, social media makes outrage more prevalent AND more potent at the same time.

It’s more prevalent because social media platforms make it a lot easier to express outrage. The tools for doing so are at our fingertips 24/7. The cost of expressing outrage is lower on social media than in real life — no one’s going to punch you in the face online (if you’re working in mixed reality to solve this problem then I’d like to invest in your tech).

It’s more potent because it’s self-reinforcing. We react more angrily online than offline. And we know this to be algorithmically true thanks to research done by William J. Brady, a researcher at NYU. Brady studied hundreds of thousands of tweets, and found that posts using moralistic and emotional language receive a 20% boost for every trigger word used. Put simply, "we click more when we're angry."

This is good business for the social media platforms. Outrage begets more outrage. It’s not a virtuous cycle but it is a very profitable one.

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Everything above written by Dan Harvey.

soundtrack and Images from - 


A Sense of Doubt blog post #1651 - Everybody Knows 2019 - Musical Monday for starting school - 1908.26

Hey Lower Columbia College STUDENTS! @LowerCC has some great resources for the #Spring term. https://t.co/ndHIQsuUCN#CollegeStudent #collegelife #cowlitzcounty pic.twitter.com/gtjSEKnlPC

— Cowlitz DEM (@CowlitzDEM) April 15, 2020

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2004.21 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1753 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.