Lesson 01.06 Flashcards
What is paraphrasing?
Restating the authors words in a different way; ideas are often paraphrase to make them easier to under understand or to avoid repetitive words; you should keep all the ideas and details from the original, no matter how small, and you should keep it about the same length; you can change up the words and sometimes word order in a sentence, as long as you don’t change the meaning; it’s not considered your original work because it contains the original thoughts of the author.
What is a summary?
Breaks down a text into its essential ideas and arranges them into a simple, shorter piece of text; may only be a few sentences or a short paragraph, and giving the central ideas of the text, as well as the most important key details or topics, and it doesn’t include supporting details or specific language; isn’t simply a statement, but a breaking down of the text.
What are the six steps to writing an effective summary?
1.) read the text, the entire article, looking up unfamiliar words; 2.) divide the text into sections, each chunk should not have more than a few paragraphs, usually 4 to 6 chunks is good; 3.) write a central idea sentence for each section; 4.) put your central ideas together (this is your first draft); 5.) revise your draft to make it more concise, effective, and objective (remove redundant words/phrases, remove/simplify words/phrases that are unimportant to understanding the central ideas, replace specific lists/phases with general terms, remove your opinion/experiences; 6.) proofread for spelling and grammar.
What does objective mean?
The opposite of subjective, not relating to anybody’s opinions, but only facts instead.
What do you do if your summary is too big?
Before writing, separate the text sections and write only one central idea for each, and after writing, take out repeated words/phrases and unimportant details.
What do you do if your summary is too small? (3-ish questions)
Use “journalist questions” to expand your summary (e.g. who/what is each section about? What is the author trying to prove? When and where did this happen?) your answers to these questions can be used to write your first draft.
What are four attributes of effective summaries?
They are shorter than the original text, they include all the most important details, they present ideas in your own words, they are objective and do not include your opinion.
