Again, I have a handout for intro students that outlines how to summarize
appropriately, including how to avoid plagiarism. It's available online at:
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dtwasieleski/artisumm.html
Let me know what y'all think!
David W.
>> Sue Frantz wrote:
>> > After a bit more probing, I discovered they both
>> > had been taught (by separate teachers in separate school districts in
>> > separate decades) that to summarize something, you take each sentence
>> > and reword it. No wonder they looked alike!
>> >
>> > I explained that's not the best technique for summarizing. :-)
>>
>> In one of my sophomore-level courses I regularly ask the entire
>> class about
>> this. Large percentages (I'd guess around 40%) report that they had been
>> taught to summarize that way, and in fact that a perfectly acceptable
>> paper
>> could be made by doing nothing more than that. Remember that I'm asking
>> the
>> class as a whole, when the class members have no reason to say that if it
>> weren't true (i.e., I'm not asking AFTER having discovered that a student
>> did that, and I'm asking after having made it clear that they won't be
>> doing
>> it that way in my classes). I'm convinced that _many_ students come to us
>> honestly believing as a result of prior education that one writes papers
>> by
>> rewording original sources a sentence at a time.
>>
>> I suppose you might argue that skill is a necessary developmental
>> step in
>> learning to write papers, and obviously there's the strong possibility
>> that
>> students are learning that, but their high school teachers aren't actually
>> TEACHING it (in other words, that the students are misinterpreting the
>> teachers).
>>
>> Paul Smith
>> Alverno College
>>
>
>
David Wasieleski, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology and Counseling
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698
912/333-5930
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dtwasieleski
"Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other guy to fall
down..."
--Kyle Secor as Det. Tim Bayless
Homicide:Life on the Street
"Kellerman, P.I., Part 2"
