EN 101 Summary Assignment

EN 101 Summary Assignment: Assignment: Write a 300-500 word summary of the article. This summary will consist of a few paragraphs that summarize the main and supporting points of the article.

Objectives• Master pre-reading and reading strategies for different texts• Understand how genre and intended audience shapes reading and writing• Determine the logic to the ordering of ideas in a text and identify transitions as signposts to the different parts of texts• Annotate a reading by identifying main ideas and supporting evidence• Recognize the effect of perspective and purpose on tone, organization, and vocabulary choice• Summarize accuratelyTo complete this assignment successfully• Read and annotate the article, noting in the margins the main purpose of each paragraph• Underline the main points of the article and number the evidence that supports it• Try making an outline of the article• Determine the article’s thesis (implicit or explicit)• Make a list of what to include in your summary.• Draft, paying careful attention to attribution of ideas and/or citations• Review paraphrases• ReviseChecklistContent:o Do you correctly surmise the thesis of the article?o Do you accurately report all the main and supporting points for this thesis?o Have you represented the author’s ideas clearly without distortion?o Have you represented the authors ides concisely without including unnecessary detail?o Have you used attributive tags to discuss the author’s arguments?o Have you used your own words with few quotes and adequate paraphrase?o Have you followed summary conventions mentioning the title and the author of the article?o Have you included a works cited page?Organization:o Is your summary organized logically so as to clearly present the argument of the article (without necessarily mirroring the original order of the article)?o Have you used transitions to smoothly link the supporting points to the main points?o Do you differentiate (if necessary) between more important and less important reasons through transitional words?Style:o Is the summary typed and double spaced?o Is the essay clean stylistically, using concise and clear sentences, strong verbs and active voice, and sentence variety?o Is the essay grammatically correct?Summary Grading Criteria (for students)A Sophisticated summary• Correctly surmises the thesis and includes all of the major supporting points• Likely does not mirror the original order of the article• Contains no misreadings; represents the authors arguments fairly and accurately• Contains no opinion or information not mentioned in the article• Uses attributive tags and/or citations consistently and correctly• Summarizes using own words and adequate paraphrases• Quotes sparingly but when done, quotes are smoothly integrated• Smoothly transitions between ideas, differentiating between more important and less important points• Contains fluid sentence-level prose

B Clear and coherent summary• Summary contains the thesis and most of the main points• Contains few, if any, misreadings of article• Attributive tags and/or citations are used somewhat consistently and correctly• Quotes may not be integrated but they are explained• Paraphrases adequately• Uses competent transitions• Contains clear and concise sentence-level prose with some lapses

C Competent summary• Correctly, or nearly correctly, surmises the thesis and some of the main points.• Summary may place too much emphasis on one main point or focus too much on minor points• Summary contains some misreadings but these misreadings don’t extend to the thesis of the article• Summary may too closely follow the organization of the article itself (a blow-by-blow paraphrase is not a successful summary)• Attributive tags and/or citations are used, but are used inconsistently and/or incorrectly• Quotes are unexplained and there may be too many quotes• Paraphrases may come too close to original though much of the original sentence is changed• Transitions exist but may be inappropriate or confusing• Sentences are mostly correct (the occasional fragment or run on) but may be awkwardD Inadequate summary• Misreads purpose/thesis of article; may invent too different a thesis for the article; may read so much into the article that it is somewhat unrecognizable• Personal opinion may exist throughout• Fails to use attributive tags and/or citations to indicate the information presented is the author’s and not the student’s• Quotes are mostly unexplained• Paraphrases are too close to original• Transitions may be nonexistent• Sentences contain many errors and boundary issues though they are readableF Failing summary• May fail for any number of reasons: the writer responds to the ideas in the article rather than summarizes; the writer grossly misunderstands or misreads the article; the writer copies sentences without quoting or citing; sentences may be impossible to follow

Rubric